United Arab Emirates launches its first Mars Mission from Japan.
UAE launches its first Mars bound spacecraft
The United Arab Emirates successfully launched its Mars-bound Hope Probe on Sunday, marking the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission — and the first of three international missions to the Red Planet this summer. The launch marks the beginning of the country’s most ambitious space project yet, aimed at studying the weather on Mars as it evolves throughout the planet’s year.
The Emirates Mars Mission, also known as Hope, was launched atop an H-IIA rocket from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center today at 5:58 p.m. EDT (2158 GMT; 6:58 a.m. July 20 Japan Standard Time.
If all goes according to plan, the $200 million Hope mission will arrive in Mars orbit in early 2021, then study the Red Planet from above for at least one Mars year (a little less than two Earth years).
Over an hour after launch, the probe deployed solar panels to power its systems and established radio communication with the mission on earth. The mission will provide a more detailed and comprehensive understanding of the Martian atmosphere, team members have said. Key to that goal is Hope’s unique equator-circling orbit, which will give the probe a new perspective of the Red Planet’s thin, carbon dioxide-dominated air.
Hope isn’t the only spacecraft heading to Mars this summer China plans to dispatch its first completely homegrown Mars strategic Tianwen-1, which includes an orbiter, lander and rover — on July 23. (China’s first Mars craft of any sort, the Yinghuo-1 orbiter, rode along with Russia’s Phobos-Grunt mission, which suffered a launch failure in November 2011.) And NASA’s life-hunting, sample-caching Perseverance rover is scheduled to lift off on July 30.
It’s imperative that these missions get off the ground relatively soon — in Perseverance’s case, by Aug. 15. Launch windows for Mars-bound craft come around just once every 26 months when Earth and the Red Planet are properly aligned.
