The first Mars mission at the United Arab Emirates, using the Hope probe, is expected to enter orbit the red planet on Tuesday.
When the spacecraft arrives, it will make the UAE the only fifth country in history to reach Mars.
The probe will study the planet’s atmosphere, something that has not been done with any previous Mars mission.
Understanding the environments of other planets will allow researchers to better understand the Earth, and other planets in the universe to better understand.
Carrying three instruments, Hope aims to answer questions such as how conditions throughout the Martian atmosphere affect levels of atmospheric escape – an escape of Hydrogen and Oxygen, building blocks of life from the Martian atmosphere .
And the Martian exosphere (high atmosphere) travels at different times during the day, and at different distances compared to Mars.
The instruments will collect various data points on the atmosphere to measure seasonal and daily changes.
But entering the Mars orbit is all dependent on one imminent imminent moment, the Mars Orbital Insertion (MOI).
Achieving a MOI is a complex maneuver, the spacecraft is turned to set it for a 27-minute acceleration, and slid down from a journey speed of 121,000 km / h to something closer to 18,000 km / h.
The firing will begin at around 1530 GMT (1930 GST).
The pressure on the spacecraft of all engines firing at the same time is far greater than those at the launch and will be terminated by a two-way 22-minute radio delay from Earth, requiring the probe very autonomous.
About 10 minutes after the MOI firing, the Hope probe flies into the dark side of Mars.
After the gravity of Mars captures Hope, it enters a stage, called the capture orbit.
The capture orbit takes the spacecraft from a distance of 1,000 to 49,380 km from the surface of the planet Mars.
In this phase an instrument will be tested and the spacecraft will, over the next two months, move into a science orbit.
The transition to the Orbit of Hope science will be completed by April 2021.
The probe has a 20,000–43,000 km elliptical orbit, and completes one orbit of the planet every 55 hours.
While in daily communication with the Earth at the level of the capture orbit, in its orbit science, connections occur two or three times a week with each pass about six to eight hours to data download and upload updates and instructions.
Sarah bint Yousef Al Amiri, minister of state for advanced technologies, chair of the UAE Space Agency, said she hopes the mission will be able to share data by September.
She told PA news agency: “One of our main aims is to ensure that we share the data as soon as we are comfortable, as a science team, that the data can be used by users. -science and the data is correct.
“So we have put in about three months to make sure that our processing is correct, that the instrument is behaving properly, that the result we are getting from the views of Mars and not from a Mars observation with something on the instrument or something in the processing.
“We hope to release the data at the beginning of September, and it will be data from the trapping orbit captured around Mars, and also from the beginning of our science phase.”
She said: “Much of what we hope to learn from the data of this mission is new, so this is a very commendable mission for other missions so we hope that other people’s missions around Mars will also be used. our data in conjunction with their data.
“And there are discussions with a few teams, which have spaceships around Mars, to see how we can collaborate and expand our science and therefore analytical capabilities using more and more data. ”
Hope’s mission was one of three launched into Mars from Earth in July, involving the Persasa rover Nasa and the Tianwen-1 mission in China.
Tianwen-1, which is expected to enter the orbit of the red planet Wednesday, will orbit the planet and land on it, and Perseverance will land on Mars.
Omran Sharaf, project director of Emirates Mars Mission (Hope Probe), Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center, told PA that the mission had shown how international cooperation plays a key role in space missions.
He said: “The lesson here is largely how space diplomacy, the diplomacy of science and international collaboration could play a major role in accelerating many of the exploration missions and reducing the space. concerns of governments and nations when it comes to such missions.
“And at the same time accelerating the learning process, and by collaborating, with everyone and being transparent and open about such collaborations.
“And this is why we can deliver on a very tight schedule, with a very tight budget, but create the impact we wanted. ”