UAE’s Hope mission on its way to Mars

A Japanese rocket launched the United Arab Emirates’ first mission to Mars July 19, an orbiter that will study the planet’s weather while demonstrating the country’s growing space capabilities. The H-2A rocket lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan at 5:58 p.m. Eastern. The launch was originally scheduled for July 14 but delayed five days by poor weather at the launch site. The rocket’s upper stage released the Emirates Mars Mission, or Hope, spacecraft, nearly an hour after lift-off. The spacecraft contracted controllers shortly after separation.

Hope is a 1,350-kilogram satellite developed by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) in the UAE. The spacecraft will arrive at Mars in February 2021 and go into an initial elliptical orbit between 1,000 and 49,380 kilometres above the planet. It will later move into its desired orbit for science observations, with altitudes ranging from 20,000 to 43,000 kilometres. Development of Hope started in late 2013 as the next phase in the country’s effort to grow its space capabilities, after development of a series of Earth observation spacecraft. “They wanted us to take it to the next level,” said Omran Sharaf, project manager for Hope. “They wanted us to create a career path for scientists.”

Hope carries three instruments: a camera, infrared spectrometer and ultraviolet spectrometer. The spacecraft will provide data on the Martian atmosphere, including monitoring weather and climate to a greater degree than past Mars orbiter missions by the United States and other nations. “One of the requirements very early on was to send a mission that does more than capture an image declaring that the UAE reached Mars,” said Sarah al-Amiri, UAE minister of state for advanced sciences and deputy project manager for Hope. “We are the very first weather satellite for Mars.”