Every nation right now is racing to make contact with Mars, if not in person, then at least
with a robotic spacecraft in preparations for humans to one day land on the red planet.
And I hope you’re all as excited as we are for a new nation joining the quest towards
exploring Mars, we’re talking about the United Arab Emirates.
Yes, the United Arab Emirates is going to be the first Arab and gulf region country
to send a scientific mission to the red planet on July 20th.
How exciting!
The motivation for the mission started back in the year 2014, and along six years, the
United Arab Emirates Space Agency and its collaborators around the world went into planning
the mission and designing its probe, and now, the UAE nation’s dream is finally going
to become a reality.
The official name of the mission is “Emirates Mars Mission” and the probe was given the
name “Hope Probe” to represent the hope of the Emirati youth and nation to conquer
space exploration starting with a mission towards Mars.
Fun fact, the word “Hope” in Arabic is “Amal”, to pronounce it correctly, think
of George Clooney’s wife; “Amal Clooney”, it’s literally the same name!
The 200 million dollar mission will be worth every cent, not only for the massive scientific
advancements, but also for being the first in the Arab region and the Middle East to
push its limits and visit the red planet.
The “Emirates Mars Mission” will not be landing on Mars, it is designed as a probe
to orbit the planet and gather information remotely.
The probe is very light weight with only 1.35 Kilograms (2.97 pounds) including fuel, and
dimensions up to 3 meter x 7.9 meters (9.8 feet x 25.9 feet) and that’s while the solar
panels are open.
The probe is equipped with 600 watts solar panels to collect enough power for the equipment
on board and a 1.85 meter (72 inch) antenna to communicate back and forth with Earth.
But what exactly will the probe be doing up there orbiting Mars?
The mission goals are aligned with the international goals of “The Mars Exploration Program Advisory
Group”; an international group that decides the most important scientific questions to
be answered regarding Mars.
The group proposes 4 major scientific goals, the “Emirates Mars Mission” is specially
concerned with the second of these goals which is to understand the processes and history
of climate on Mars, and more specifically, to study the lower and upper atmosphere of
the planet.
These goals are further broken down into 3 scientific objectives:
1.
Analysing the lower Martian atmosphere to understand the climate dynamics.
2.
Analysing the upper Martian atmosphere to understand the weather changes and the escape
of Hydrogen and Oxygen.
3.
Identifying why Mars is losing Hydrogen and Oxygen into space.
In satisfying these objectives, the “Hope Probe” will be Mars’ first ever weather
satellite; continuously monitoring Mars’ weather during all the seasons from an orbital
inclination of 25 degrees and a minimum orbital distance of 20000 kilometers (12.4 thousands
miles) to a maximum of 43000 kilometeres (26.7 thousands miles.)
The “Emirates Mars Mission” objectives will be realised by 3 instruments aboard the
“Hope Probe”:
The first is the “Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer” or (EMIR) for short, this
instrument will study the atmosphere of the red planet in the infrared spectrum of light,
and it has a spatial resolution of 100 to 300 kilometers.
The spectrometer will scan Mars’ lower atmosphere to understand the distribution of water vapor
and ice water as well as dust, and It will also observe the thermal conditions of Mars’
atmosphere.
The second is the “Emirates Exploration Imager” or (EXI) for short which is a camera
that takes 12 megapixel high resolution coloured images of Mars and observes the Martian atmosphere
in both the visible and the ultraviolet spectrums of light.
The visible light system has a surface resolution of 4.6 km per pixel when the probe is at the
farthest point to the planet and a resolution of 2.2 km per pixel at the nearest point.
The ultraviolet light system on the other hand, has a surface resolution of 4.9 km per
pixel at the farthest point, and a resolution of 2.3 km per pixel at the nearest point.
The imager was developed by both the “Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics” in the
university of Colorado, Boulder in America and the “Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre”
in the United Arab Emirates, and it can capture up to 180 frames per second.
The third is the “Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer” or (EMUS) for short, and this
spectrometer will make observations only in the far ultraviolet spectrum of light.
The spectrometer will be able to observe the ultraviolet emissions of Hydrogen and Oxygen
and Carbon Monoxide in Mars’ thermosphere and exosphere, as well as measuring the weather
changes in the thermosphere.
This instrument is also the result of collaboration between the “Laboratory for Atmospheric
and Space Physics” and the “Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre”
The control and operation of the “Hope Probe” will be a collaborative effort between facilities
across the world not only in the United Arab Emirates, let’s start with the launch itself
that will entirely be under the control of the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA.)
The probe will launch aboard the “Mitsubishi Heavy Industries” rocket “H2A202” from
the “Tanegashima Space Centre” in Japan, and all functions related to the launch vehicle
will also be performed and monitored by “Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.”
The “H2A202” is an excellent rocket to launch the “Hope Probe”, it’s a two-stage-engine
rocket, and is 53 meters (174 feet) tall with a mass of 289 kilograms (637 pounds.)
Looking at the ground support teams, we will also find an international collaboration,
starting with the “Ground Station Communication Network” that is assigned to NASA’s “Deep
Space Network” in Pasadena, California.
And moving to “Mission design”, that’s going to be managed by the American company
“Advanced Space” in Boulder, Colorado where they will maintain the trajectory and
manoeuvers of the “Hope Probe” along the journey.
Both the “Mission Operations Centre” and the “Science Data Centre” are located
at the “Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre” in Dubai where the “Mission Operations Centre”
is responsible for monitoring the spacecraft and the initial data processing.
And the “Science Data Centre” is responsible for all the storing and analysis of the data
coming from the “Hope Probe”, as well as guiding future access to this data for
the benefit of the international scientific community.
The mission was scheduled to launch on Wednesday July 15th, but the official twitter account
of the UAE Space Agency tweeted in the early morning of July 14th that the launch date
has been pushed back to July 16th, at 8:43 GMT.
But on the 16th, the launch date was delayed for a 2nd time to be between the 20th and
the 22nd of July.
The decision came due to bad weather conditions at the launch site in Japan, but don’t be
alarmed, delays happen all the time, specially due to the weather because scientists can’t
quite predict it 100%.
The launch window will extend till August 12th, so any other future unfortunate weather
conditions that will result in delays within this window are manageable.
But any delays later to August 12th will unfortunately be catastrophic, because this precise launch
window is important to provide the perfect launch conditions between Earth and Mars.
Once the launch is done and the “Hope Prope” is in space, it will deploy its solar panels
to start powering the onboard systems and the probe will start to manoeuver itself into
a trajectory towards Mars to reach the red planet 7 months later.
On approaching Mars in 2021, the “Hope Probe” will start slowing down from a speed of 121,000
kilometer per hour (75 miles per hour) to a speed of 18,000 kilometer per hour (11 miles
per hour), and that’s to allow for Mars’ gravity to capture the probe into orbit.
About half the amount of fuel is spent on the process of slowing down the probe, and
it’s a crucial process because otherwise, the probe would continue on flying into space
and miss the red planet all together, and in that case, it will be reduced to being
a fancy space junk.
The process is also autonomous with no interference from the ground teams whatsoever, because
communication between Earth and Mars is delayed by a minimum of 13 minutes and a maximum of
26 minutes, so real time manoeuver would be impossible.
When Mars captures the “Hope Probe” successfully and it goes into “Capture Orbit”, the
first six weeks will be spent on testing the onboard scientific instruments before doing
any observations.
The “Capture Orbit” is an elliptical 40-hour orbit, at which the probe will approach Mars
at a minimum of 1000 kilometers (620 miles) and a maximum of 49.380 kilometers (30.683
miles.)
The next step is for the “Hope probe” to transition itself into another higher orbit
around the red planet: the “Science Orbit” from which scientific operations will take
place.
From this new orbit, the probe will come as close to Mars as 20 thousands kilometers (12.4
thousands miles), and as far as 43 thousands kilometers (26.7 thousands miles), and It
will take around 55 hours for the probe to complete a single round around the planet.
This new orbit is unique because it will allow the probe to scan the whole of Mars and take
plant-wide pictures and observations.
So now the probe is on its targeted orbit doing some fancy science, but how are we gonna
get hold of this data here on Earth?
Data communication between the “Hope Probe” and Earth will not be continuous, but rather
for six to eight hours intervals, and only twice a week, and during these intervals,
the probe is expected to transmit more than 1 terabyte of data back to Earth.
Once the data reaches Earth, it is ready to be analysed and stored by the ground team
at the “Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre.”
The mission is set for a lifetime of one Martian year, that is 2 Earth years of scientific
operations starting in May of 2021, with the chance to be extended in the future to two
more Earth years until 2025.
With the “Emirates Mars Mission”, the UAE aims for more than just the science, the
nation looks forward to establishing its position and leadership in space explorations among
the Arab region and the world.
Furthermore, the UAE seeks to provide and build its own Emirati space facilities to
help the nation further achieve its goals in the space sector and in doing so, advances
jobs in STEM fields among its people.
The UAE will also aim big in the future, with “Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre” planning
the “Mars 2117 program”, the program should pave the way to the United Arab Emirates to
build its own “Mars Science City” here on Earth.
The city will be a virtual human establishment in the heart of the United Arab Emirates,
it will simulate the life conditions on Mars and its environment to prepare humans for
when life on Mars is not just a dream, but a live reality.
At the end of the video, let us “hope” that the first United Arab Emirates mission
to Mars is going to be a success from start to end, and may it pave the way to more upcoming
Arab ventures to the red planet and space.