The first deep-space mission from the United Arab Emirates has reached its destination: Mars. After a journey of seven months and about 500 million kilometers (310 million miles), Hope (Arabic: Al Amal) arrived at the Red Planet on Tuesday, February 9, 2021, at 10:57 EST (15:57 GMT). The orbit created jointly by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center, the University of Colorado Boulder, Arizona State University and the University of California, Berkeley.
The science team set three important goals for the UAE Mars mission: to understand how the planet’s climate changes; Global weather mapping, specifically how weather plays a role in reducing oxygen and hydrogen from the lower atmosphere; And working on how these elements behave in the upper atmosphere and why Mars is losing them in space. It hoped that this would provide important new insights and provide a complete picture of the atmosphere of Mar how its geological features will play a role. The highest mountain in the solar system on Mars, Olympus Mons and one of the largest crater valleys, the Wells Marineris.
We know that these characteristics affect the climate. For example, a long, thin cloud regularly appears over the Arsia Mons volcano that is 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) high. Clearly, these peaks and valleys should take into account. The spacecraft will go into an elliptical orbit, covering about 20,000 kilometers and about 43,000 kilometers (12,427 and 26,718 miles, respectively) of the planet. I hope that it will take 55 hours to orbit the planet once. The scientific mission expected to begin in September 2021, and the mission team will test each of the board’s materials this month to see if they are all working properly.
Hope is the first of three missions to reach Mars this month. Tomorrow, China’s Tianwen-1 mission also expected to launch. It will be a triple-combo of an orbiter, lander, rover mission and the first Chinese mission to land on Mars. Landing not expected until May. Next week, we will have NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, which includes Rover Perseverance and Martian Helicopter Engine, the first aircraft to send to another Earth. The landing, in this case, will happen on the day – so mark the calendar for February 18.
