The United Arab Emirates’ first mission to Mars is set to reach the red planet and enter its orbit following a seven-month, 494 million km journey, allowing it to start sending data about the Martian atmosphere and climate.
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With this, the UAE has become the fifth country after the US, Russia, China, the EU, and India, to reach the Martian orbit.
The unmanned spacecraft is called ‘Al-Amal’ — the Arabic word for hope. The historic event was timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the unification of the UAE’s seven emirates.
First announced in July 2014, the Emirates Mars Mission was developed and operated by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre in collaboration with the University California, Berkeley, Arizona State University and the University of Colorado-Boulder in the United States.
In July 2020, it was launched from the Tanegashima Space Centre in Japan aboard a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ H-II A rocket.
Carrying three instruments, including a high-resolution camera and a spectrometer, the spacecraft is on an orbital mission to collect data on Martian climate dynamics and help scientists understand why Mars’s atmosphere is decaying into space.
Hope is the UAE’s fourth space mission and first interplanetary one. The previous three were all Earth-observation satellites.
Its overall mission life is one Martian year, which is about 687 days on Earth.
