UAE launches ‘Hope’ mission to Mars on Japanese rocket

The UAE made history this week when it launched its Mars Mission called Hope – the first attempt to go interplanetary by any Arab country. 

Mars Hope blasted off from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center on a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIA rocket on Sunday night. 

About an hour after liftoff, the spacecraft separated from the rocket, which will take an estimated seven months to reach Mars. 

“Years of hard work and dedication have paid off in a big way,” Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba said shortly after the launch during a virtual watch party. 

“This is a huge accomplishment, but it’s just the beginning.”

“It’s hard to put the words together but honestly, watching that take off, knowing how hard it was, knowing how challenging it was, witnessing that success made me feel immense pride,” Al Otaiba said. 

“I think every Emirati on the face of the planet should go around feeling proud of what his country has managed to accomplish today.”

The US$200 million Hope mission, also called the Emirates Mars Mission, was designed to mark the nation’s 50th anniversary. 

Space.com reported that mission planners wanted a project that would kickstart the nation’s technology and science sectors as the country looks for an economic model that can sustain it beyond its oil wealth.

In line with this, the UAE targeted a Mars orbiter and stipulated that the mission needed to contribute internationally valuable science data. 

Mission scientists consulted Mars scientists from around the world and concluded that a feasible way to accomplish the goal was to design a probe that would gather comprehensive data about the Martian atmosphere. 

Scientists hope the spacecraft will give them the data they need to piece together how the weather on Mars changes over the course of a day and of a year at every spot on the globe, and how the planet is losing its atmosphere. 

Mars’ atmosphere, according to space.com, has been fragile for eons and is now dominated by carbon dioxide, but it was once much plusher and kept the planet’s water in place, and scientists want to know how that change took place.

In order to answer these questions, Hope is equipped with three different instruments, an imager, and two spectrometers. The first will provide detailed images of the planet’s surface while all three will gather data that lets scientists track what ingredients are located wherein the atmosphere of Mars.

Once Hope has reached Mars, it will spend almost two Earth years orbiting the planet and studying its atmosphere.