The Probe’s arrival at Mars orbit marked a historic achievement for the Emirates and the Arab world and has resulted in unique and challenging observations of the Red Planet, reports Asian Lite Newsdesk
The Emirates Mars Mission (EMM), the first Arab interplanetary mission, today celebrates the first anniversary of its successful entry into Mars’ orbit and the gathering of a unique trove of Mars observations by the Hope Probe. One year on, the autonomous spacecraft has achieved historic milestones as part of its mandate to expand our understanding of the Martian planet.
The Hope Probe successfully reached Mars’ orbit at 19:42 on 9 February, 2021, completing one of the most complex and intricate stages of its mission, after a 493 million kilometre, 7-month journey through space.
“Tuesday 9 February 2021 has become an historic occasion for the UAE, marking a unique achievement for our young nation,” said Sarah bint Yousef Al Amiri, Minister of State for Advanced Technology and Chairwoman of the UAE Space Agency. “The Hope Probe is an inspiring success story for the youth of the UAE and the Arab world in general and comes as the culmination of a multinational effort to drive the development of our space sector, contribute to our growing space sector and bring new insights into our human understanding of our nearest planetary neighbour – Mars.”
Salem Butti Salem Al Qubaisi, Director General of the UAE Space Agency, said the day marks a defining moment in the history of the national space sector. “The achievements open up broad prospects for the development and prosperity of the national space sector aimed at boosting its contribution to the UAE’s GDP – as it is one of the most prominent sectors of the future economy based on innovation and knowledge.”
Eng. Omran Sharaf, Director of the Emirates Mars Mission (Hope Probe), said the Probe has registered numerous scientific achievements by observing previously-unknown phenomena. It will continue its scientific mission, which aims to provide the first comprehensive picture of the Red Planet’s climate and atmosphere, benefiting from its unique 25-degree elliptical orbit, which enables it to collect data and high-resolution images of the planet’s atmosphere every 225 hours, or 9.5 days.
170 rotations around Mars
Since its arrival, Hope Probe has circled the Red Planet over 170 times, at a rate of one cycle every 55 hours. So far, the data captured by Hope Probe has been made available in two tranches, with a commitment to continue publishing and making new batches available every three months.
The first two batches of scientific data were published in October and January respectively. The first batch, included scientific data gathered during 9 February to 22 May and totaled 110 GB. Almost 2 terabytes (TB) of data has been downloaded from the Emirates Mars Mission Science Data Centre, including 1.5TB in the form of data from the Emirates Exploration Imager (EXI) camera .
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Unprecedented scientific observations
The Hope Probe has made a number of key new observations of Martian atmospheric phenomena, including the elusive discrete aurora on Mars’ nightside, remarkable concentrations of oxygen and carbon monoxide and never-before seen images of Martian dust storms as they billow across the planetary surface.
Cloudy day on Mars:The Probe captured an image on 16 March, 2021, of particular interest to the scientific community. At the time, the spacecraft was orbiting approximately 1,366km above Mars. The image scale at center is about 148 m/pixel (note 50 km scale bar) and it covered the heavily cratered region known as “Arabia Terra” (image center is at 0.8 N latitude, 43.8 E longitude, and North is toward the top).
The western (left) half of this scene shows a dramatic occurrence of Martian water-ice clouds. Similar to cirrus clouds on Earth, these clouds form when water vapour in the Martian atmosphere freezes into tiny ice particles. The complex structure of these clouds is largely due to interactions between winds and the surface.
Foggy craters: On 15 March, 2021, the EXI camera captured multispectral images of this oblique view of the heavily cratered region known as Arabia Terra.
Images of the fully illuminated hemisphere: On 15 September 2021 the EXI camera system onboard the EMM mission obtained a set of multispectral images of the fully illuminated hemisphere of Mars.
Huge dust storms: On 5 January, 2022, the EXI camera system onboard the EMM mission obtained the half-illuminated view of Mars the sun was just setting near the center of the disk.
The Hope Probe is scheduled to continue its scientific mission to explore Mars until the middle of 2023, with the possibility of extending it for an additional Martian year (two Earth years).
