With the launch of the United States, the United Arab Emirates has made a historic first step towards interplanetary research First mission of the Arab world to Mars. The Hope or Al Amal spacecraft left Earth from Tanegashima, Japan, with the help of a Mitsubishi rocket amplifier on Sunday afternoon, just before 3 p.m. PT.
As with all rocket launches, it started with a countdown. But like many aspects of the mission, the countdown was steeped in history. The last 10 seconds before the start were broadcast in Arabic for the first time. The mission was not without hiccups earlier in the week when the weather was in Japan forced to delay the start twice. And a bigger problem plagued the development of hope: the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic hovered over the mission.
"We didn't have the pandemic on the program," said Fahad Al Mehri, executive director of the space sector at the UAE Space Agency, during a live broadcast. "It is not something we can develop around."
But the pandemic was just a lasting thought and the sky became clear for Sunday's start. On Monday at 2:58 p.m. PT / 1:58 a.m.UAE time, the Mitsubishi rocket amplifier made its perfect take-off from the Tanegashima Space Center.
"There was silence just before the launch," said Faraz Javed, a reporter at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center, during a live broadcast. "When the rocket started, there was cheers, there was joy - I even saw people cry."
The missile shot through the blue into the upper layers of the atmosphere, and the first stage boosters separated cleanly. Around 3:55 p.m. PT, the Hope probe separated from the Mitsubishi rocket amplifier to receive light applause from the launch center in Japan. As a result of the separation, the car-sized probe was brought into a transfer orbit that will now transport it around 500 million kilometers (310 million miles) to the red planet.
Assuming the journey goes smoothly, the probe will arrive on Mars in about seven months and shortly after that its first observations will begin.
The spaceship is said to settle on Mars orbit to "study the dynamics of the Martian atmosphere on a global scale, as well as on a daily and seasonal time scale," according to the Emirates Mars Mission website at the UAE Space Agency. The probe is also equipped for high-resolution photos of the red planet.
While large agencies such as NASA, the European Space Agency and Roscosmos tend to be in the spotlight, the UAE's space agency shows that there is room for smaller programs to shape space research.
Hope is one of several missions The goal is to start within a time window of opportunity when Earth and Mars are in an optimal position. NASA hopes to follow suit with his Perseverance Rover At the end of July, while China is also supposed to send its own orbiter and rover in the Tianwen-1 mission Later this month.
If these missions progress as planned, it will be a busy February for Mars observers. Hope earned the award of being the first of the three to begin the epic journey.
