(MENAFN – Emirates News Agency (WAM)) DUBAI, February 3, 2021 (WAM) – CNN has reported that the United Arab Emirates’ first mission to Mars is almost ready for a rendezvous with the red planet.
In their report the Atlanta-based television channel said that the Mars Emirates Mission, known as the Hope Probe, will go into orbit around Mars on February 9. The mission was one of three missions launched to Mars from Earth in July, carrying a NASA rover and Tianwen-1 mission in China. Hope will orbit the planet, Tianwen-1 will orbit the planet and it will land and perseverance will land on Mars.
The report also pointed out that all three missions were launched around the same time as a result of an alignment between Mars and Earth on the same side of the sun, making for a more efficient trip to Mars.
The Hope Probe is the first of these missions to reach Mars. Ashley Strickland, CNN’s space and science writer, said the UAE Space Agency will share a live broadcast of Hope’s arrival on Feb. 9 starting at 10:30 a.m. ET on its website.
Upon arrival of the spacecraft, the Hope Probe marks the UAE as the only fifth country in history to reach the red planet. The mission’s goals do not stop there.
The probe, along with its three scientific instruments, is expected to create the first complete picture of the Martian atmosphere. The instruments will collect various data points on the atmosphere to measure seasonal and daily changes.
This information will give scientists an idea of what the dynamics of climate and weather are like in different layers of the Martian atmosphere. Together, this sheds light on how energy and particles, such as oxygen and hydrogen, are moved through the atmosphere and how they even escape to Mars.
“We have learned from past missions that the loss of atmosphere over time over Martian history is important,” David Brain, deputy principal investigator for MAVEN orbiter, or Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, said at the University of Colorado laboratory Boulder for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
“We need to do more to measure that loss and to understand how the rest of the atmosphere affects that loss from a global perspective.”
Getting up to reach the mission to Mars has been an emotional roller coaster, said Sarah bint Yousif Al Amiri, Minister of State for Advanced Sciences and chair of the UAE Space Agency.
“Every point of celebration is followed by a number of points of concern awaiting the next points of celebration,” she said.
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