UAE Mars Mission: Hope Probe approaches Red Planet - as it happened
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Your support makes all the difference.The Hope spacecraft has launched from the United Arab Emirates and is set to reach Mars, orbiting the Red Planet to study its climate.
The craft is currently travelling at over 120,000km/h (75,000mph), but a tense 30-minute period as it enters the planet's gravitational pull will dictate the success of the mission. The 27 minute-long manoeuvre will see the spaceship disappear behind the planet - unable to be monitored from the Earth.
The probe relies on its autonomous behaviour to overcome the 190 million kilometre gap in distance between the Earth and Mars; it takes 11 minutes for a radio command to reach the craft, far too long to be adequately controlled.
Should it prove successful, Hope will study how energy moves through the Martian atmosphere. It will track the movement of hydrogen and oxygen atoms at the top of the atmosphere, as well as lofted dust which has a significant effect on the planet's temperature.
Follow all the latest news here.
The Hope probe is currently six minutes into the 27-minute burn, during which time the craft is unmonitorable from Earth.
The majority of the craft's fuel will be used in this process, with six Delta V thrusters burning to slow down the speed of Hope.
The mission has a 50 per cent chance of being successful, but Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has said that the majority of the country's "knowledge goals" have been achieved with the launch of the craft.
Francois Forget, the Deputy Director at the Dynamic Meteorology Laboratory in Paris, says that after being able to gather day-to-day information about Mars' atmosphere and climate the next goal would be measure wind speeds.
This mission, and previous missions to Mars, did not have the ability to measure wind speed from orbit - but the technology is developing, and such data would give scientists more detailed knowledge of how Mars' ecology operates.
After a successful approach to Mars, the Hope probe will enter an elliptical orbit around the planet.
It will reach 621 miles above the Martian surface at its closest, and 30,683 miles at its most distant - taking 40 hours to complete one orbit.
The most vital part of the Hope probe's mission is the half-hour window when it approaches Mars, which is just as difficult as a successful launch itself.
Almost half of the spacecraft's fuel will be needed to slow it down, as it drops from more than 75,185 miles per hour to 11,184 miles per hour, CNN reports.
"Less than half of the spacecraft that have been sent to Mars have actually made it successfully," said Pete Withnell, program manager for the mission at the University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
"But this is a highly practiced, highly simulated and highly analyzed event. I cannot imagine being better prepared than we are right now."
"Any image we got of Mars would be iconic but I just can't imagine what it's going to feel like to get that first full-disk image of Mars, once we're in orbit," Sarah Al Amiri, the Emirati minister of state for advanced technology and chair of the UAE Space Agency, told the BBC.
"And for me also, it's getting that science data down and having our science team start analysing it and finding artefacts that haven't been discovered before."
Visitors arriving at UAE airports will receive a "Martian Ink" stamp on their passports, made from volcanic basalt rocks which give Mars its red hue.
A message on the stamp reads: "You’ve arrived in the Emirates. The Emirates is arriving at Mars on 09.02.2021."
The rocks were collected from the Al Hajar Mountains and Sharjah’s Mleiha Desert by experts and gemologists, according to the Emirates News Agency.
"On 20th July, 2020, the world watched in excitement as Emirates Mars Mission’s Hope Probe blasted off towards Mars. Now, seven months later on 9th February, 2021, the Hope Probe is set to arrive to the Red Planet’s orbit - a major milestone for the UAE and for the Arab world that embodies hope, and conveys the ambition and motivation of the region’s people in overcoming the most pressing challenges to realise their dreams," Khaled Al Shehhi, Executive Director of Production and Digital Communication Sector at the UAE Government Media Office, said.
The Hope Probe originally launched from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center for seven-month voyage, facing off bad weather which caused the mission to be delayed twice.
The Emirates Mars Mission has cost $200m (£155.8m), according to minister for advanced sciences Sarah Amiri.
The Emirates Mars Mission “Hope Probe” is tasked to provide the first ever complete picture of the Martian atmosphere, with an infrared spectrometer, ultraviolet spectrometer, and exploration imager for high-resolution photos all on board the craft.
The infrared spectrometer measures the global distribution of dust, ice clouds, water vapours, and temperature profiles, while ultraviolet information is used to measure the abundance and variability of carbon monoxide and oxygen in the thermosphere.
Tracking the Hope Probe
The Hope probe is scheduled to enter Mars' orbit today, with the UAE Space Agency providing live coverage starting around 3:30pm (7:30 am PT). Viewers can also track the probe's progress online as it approaches the Red Planet.
"We're entering a very critical phase," said project director, Omran Sharaf. "It's a phase that basically defines whether we reach Mars, or not; and whether we'll be able to conduct our science, or not.
"If we go too slow, we crash on Mars; if we go too fast, we skip Mars," he told BBC News.
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