A persistent problem with planets is that they are so big: send a spaceship to a patch on a planet and inevitably some of the things you learn will apply only there.
That fight is particularly difficult when scientists reflect on a planet’s atmosphere and climate. By definition, these are global phenomena and interact with other global phenomena in complex ways.
That puzzle is the reason, despite a rich history of spacecraft observations of MarsScientists still wonder how the planet’s atmosphere really works: from top to bottom, pole to pole, and from sunrise to sunset and vice versa.
Related: Mars ‘Hope’: UAE’s first interplanetary spacecraft aims to make history
If all goes well, a newly arrived country mission to planetary science will soon begin gathering the data scientists need for a truly global understanding of the Martian atmosphere. the United Arab Emirates (UAE) plans to launch its first interplanetary spacecraft, called the Emirates Mission on Mars or hope, on Tuesday (July 14), with takeoff scheduled for 4:51 pm EDT (2051 GMT).
The $ 200 million mission will then embark on a seven-month cruise to Mars, orbiting the Red Planet in early 2021. Hope plans to observe Mars for at least a full Martian year (just under two years). terrestrial) since it works to understand the Martian atmosphere.
If the spacecraft arrives successfully, which the team knows is a difficult proposition, the UAE will become the fifth or sixth entity to orbit Mars, depending on how the mission’s timeline compares to that of China. . Tianwen-1 Mars Lander, will also launch this summer.
Leveraging the human legacy of Mars exploration
A dozen orbiters had previously worked on Mars, and Hope was purposely designed with an eye toward the half-century history of spacecraft sent to Mars. However, mission personnel wanted to avoid the risk of staying within the limits of what other projects have done.
“We always learn from past missions,” Mariam Al Shamsi, director of the space science department at the UAE’s Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center, which runs the Hope mission, told Space.com. “There is no perfect mission, so each mission that emerges learns from previous missions.” In Hope’s case, the mission particularly learned from NASA. Atmosphere of Mars and volatile evolution (MAVEN) orbiter, scientists said.
“The mission science is very complementary to other missions that went to Mars,” Hessa Al Matroushi, head of mission analysis and scientific data at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center, told Space.com. “But it complements them, adds more understanding to the gaps that have been shown.”
To achieve that balance, the engineers-turned-scientists leading the mission needed to understand the scope of Mars exploration to date, which meant consulting the Mars scientific community. After that process, Hope leaders concluded that the the environment was the place to focus to find that sweet spot.
Then, he started designing the spacecraft.
“You don’t want to send two spacecraft that measure the same things, no matter how important they are,” Bruce Jakosky, project scientist on the Hope mission and principal investigator for MAVEN, told Space.com. “The new thing is to make measurements that we just didn’t know should be done before, and in that sense it builds on everything that has happened before.”
In Hope’s case, mission personnel realized that by using instruments similar to those of MAVEN and other spacecraft, but by placing the spacecraft in a completely unique orbit, the mission could address some crucial questions about the Martian atmosphere.
An atmosphere of hope
The Hope spacecraft carries three instruments: ultraviolet and infrared spectrometers, plus an optical and ultraviolet light-sensitive camera. Those instruments are packaged in a spaceship that reaches 3,000 pounds. (1,350 kilograms) and will require about seven months to get to Mars, where he will focus on the thin carbon dioxide-dominated atmosphere of the red planet.
Although scientists have obtained atmospheric data from a large number of spacecraft before, Hope brings something new to the table: it orbits over the planet’s equator. “Our uniqueness comes from orbit,” said Al Shamsi. That orbit is what gives the spacecraft its ability to see how conditions in the lower atmosphere change over time on Mars.
“What this mission does is provide us with a comprehensive understanding of the Martian atmosphere throughout the day,” said Sarah Al Amiri, mission scientific leader and UAE Minister of State for Advanced Sciences, during a press conference on 9 of July. “Therefore, it covers all regions of Mars at all times local to Mars, and that is a comprehensive understanding that fills the gap of change over time across different seasons of Mars for an entire year.”
But Hope will study the entire atmosphere, not just the lower atmosphere where the climate develops. In particular, it will help scientists understand what is happening in a layer called the thermosphere, which lies between the upper and lower atmosphere, about 60 to 120 miles (100 to 200 kilometers) high. Here, the gas is influenced by what happens both near the surface of Mars and in the upper atmosphere.
“The thermosphere is a kind of transition point between the upper atmosphere and the lower atmosphere,” Fatma Lootah, instrument science manager Hope, told Space.com. “So it is very interesting to analyze what happens there.” In particular, scientists want Hope’s data to help them connect what’s going on in the upper and lower atmospheres, rather than looking at the layers in isolation.
More scientific potential
that if the spacecraft beats the odds and successfully makes it to the Red Planet, it will also aid many other investigations.
Some of that is integrated into the main mission objectives. For example, Hope’s orbit will also position the spacecraft for regular photography. fuzzy hydrogen bubble leaving the planet. MAVEN saw that structure when it arrived, but couldn’t imagine the bubble regularly.
“These photos are very cool to look at,” Lootah said. “They are like a glowing halo around the planet. Therefore, they are very beautiful to see, and I am really excited to see these images.”
Those images could also help scientists understand how Mars is losing its atmosphere. Once, before the Red Planet was so red, it had a thick and humid atmosphere like Earth, but now it’s gone. And still, the atmosphere slowly slides away from the planet’s gravitational pull, drifting into space to form that halo.
And, of course, there is the usual fact of science: that even the best scientists cannot predict the complexities of a planet. “Every mission, every new instrument we’ve flown, has discovered things we didn’t even know how to ask,” Jakosky said. “You design a measurement mission to answer some specific questions, and you design the instruments so that they can perform the measurements you want to get. With most scientific missions, and certainly with Mars missions all the way. At first, I think that everyone would be disappointed if that’s all we have. “
A potential opportunity for those surprise discoveries is from random events like dust storms. “I think the most exciting thing, too, is when you get something interesting in the data that you didn’t expect, and we call it episodic events,” Lootah said. “It is very exciting to see, and since it will cover a large amount of the planet, we will be able to see more episodic events. So that is also something we hope for.”
Even the data scientists hope to see will end up supporting discoveries beyond the limits of the Hope mission, Al Matroushi emphasized, saying the UAE decided to make all Hope data publicly available for this reason.
“The mission was developed for our purposes, but the data can be used to answer many scientific questions,” he said. “I would be very happy and excited to see what kind of scientific researchers will be able to obtain the data that the mission will provide.”
But more than that, Hope scientists simply hope to be able to work with data from their own spacecraft for the first time after years of practicing data from other missions and hypothetical data, Lootah said. “I think it will be a surreal feeling.”
So it was also released on July 14. not the main event for the team. “I think people are excited about the launch, and we all are,” said Al Matroushi. But the launch pales in comparison to the arrival on Mars in February 2021. “Seeing the first image of the probe, that would be the most exciting time, because this is where our work begins.”
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
