contador web Skip to content

United Arab Emirates successfully launches its first space mission to Mars

First Mars mission is part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of the UAE foundation

This Sunday (19), there was the first successful launch of a space mission of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) towards Mars, which is taking a probe to the red planet that will study the change of seasons over the course of a year, marking the beginning of an ambitious space plan in the Arab country.

Call of Hope (Hope in the translation into Portuguese), the probe was launched from the Tanegashima Space Center, in Japan, with the help of the Japanese H-IIA rocket. She will spend the next seven months navigating deep space towards Mars and, in mid-February 2021, try to perform a maneuver to place herself in an elongated orbit around Mars, where she will analyze the planet's atmosphere and climate over throughout each day.

The design of the space program for United Arab Emirates was conceived in 2014 as a way to inspire the country's youth and, at the same time, celebrate the UAE's 50th anniversary, which will take place in December 2021.

United Arab Emirates successfully launches country's first probe for Mars Screen at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai, broadcasting live the Hope probe launch to the control team (Image: Giuseppe Cacace / AFP

For this reason, the success of the launch is cause for much celebration, since for the probe to be in the orbit of Mars on the 50th anniversary, the launch needed to happen successfully in the window between July and August, in the period when the orbits of the Earth and of Mars around the sun are closest to each other. This approach occurs only once every 26 months, so if the launch was not successful it would be impossible for the probe to reach the red planet before December 2021.

According to Yousef Al Otaiba, UAE ambassador to the United States, the success of the launch was the result of years of dedication by the entire team, which allowed the idea of ​​sending a rocket into space in just six years to become a reality.

Challenges of the UAE probe

United Arab Emirates successfully launches country's first probe for Mars Engineers in mission control at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai, monitoring the launch of the country's first Martian probe (Image: Giuseppe Cacace / AFP)

Although the launch went smoothly, there is still a long way to go before the mission can be considered a success. The first one is to reach Mars: in about a month, engineers from the country's space program will need to make the rocket's first course correction to ensure that the probe reaches the planet.

According to Pete Withnell, one of those responsible for the mission, send the probe towards Mars It is equivalent to an archer trying to hit a 2 mm diameter target a kilometer away, so any slight error in calculations can put Hope in a trajectory quite far from where she should be reaching.

But the biggest challenge of all should occur in February, when the probe should arrive at the orbit of Mars. At this time, the probe must not only maintain the incoming trajectory calculated by the station, but also reduce its speed from 121 thousand km / h to 18 thousand km / h in order to keep its movement in line with the planet's rotation. And worst of all: this must be done without any assistance from the team on Earth, since at this point in the trip the probe will be so far away that any command sent from the base will not arrive with the speed necessary for this type of maneuver.

United Arab Emirates successfully launches country's first probe for MarsJapanese H-IIA rocket, responsible for taking the Hope rig out of Earth's orbit (Image: JAXA)

Even so, the success of the launch is something that should be much celebrated by the country, since this type of mission is rarely successful at first, especially for a country that never launched into space anything other than terrestrial observation satellites (such as those used to monitor weather or take cartographic photos like the ones we see on Google Earth).

If everything happens correctly, the mission of the United Arab Emirates it must be the first of three missions that should take advantage of the approach of the orbits of Earth and Mars to launch missions to the red planet. The next mission will take place on July 23, when China is due to send an orbital probe, one of the type lander (which lands on the planet and conducts studies in the area around where it landed) and a rover (a cart that explores the surface of the planet). And soon after, NASA should send the rover Perseverance (Perseverance in Portuguese), who will look for indications that there was life on Mars.

Source: The Verge