The United Arab Emirates Hope mission has returned its first photo of Mars.
The spacecraft entered orbit around the Red Planet on Tuesday, making the UAE the first Arab country in history to have a scientific presence in Earth’s closest neighbor.
This first image will be followed by many similar views of Mars.
Hope was placed in wide orbit so that it could study the planet’s weather and climate systems, meaning it will also see the planet’s entire disk.
It is a type of image that is known from telescopes on Earth, but less so from satellites actually positioned on Mars.
They are traditionally kept close to the planet so that they can take high-resolution photos of the surface and act as telecommunication relay stations for landing robots in contact with Earth.
The photo at the top of this page was taken by Hope’s EXI instrument from an altitude of 24,700 km (15,350 miles) above the surface of Mars at 20:36 GMT on Wednesday – one day after arriving on the Red Planet.
The north pole of Mars is at the top left of the image. In the center, just emerging in the early morning sunlight, is Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system. Look exactly at the border between day and night, the so-called terminator.
The three shield volcanoes in a line are Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons and Arsia Mons. Look east to the edge of the planet and you can see the mighty Valles Marineris canyon system. It is partly covered by clouds.
“The broadcast of the first image of Mars by the Hope Probe is a defining moment in our history and marks the UAE’s entry into advanced countries involved in space exploration,” the mission’s twitter account“We hope this mission will lead to new discoveries about Mars that will benefit humanity.”
Hope now runs in a first ellipse around Mars that comes as close as 1,000 km from the planet and extends to nearly 50,000 km. Over the next few weeks, this will be trimmed to an orbit of 55 hours and 22,000 km by 43,000 km that tilts about 25 degrees towards the equator.
It is from this high bass that Hope plans to do new research. It will examine how energy moves through the atmosphere from bottom to top.
One of his quests is to study the leak into space of neutral atoms of hydrogen and oxygen – remnants of Mars’ once abundant water. This will contribute to our understanding of how a previously warm and wet planet became the cold, dusty, parched world it is today.
The day the UAE Hope probe took this first image, the Chinese Tianwen-1 orbiter arrived on Mars.
Like Hope, it had to perform a braking maneuver to make sure it was captured by the planet’s gravity.
The Tianwen-1 mission is carrying a rover that will be sent to the surface in May or June.
The Chinese space agency has released early images of what its satellite saw during its insertion into orbit.
These photos are not from a scientific camera like Hope’s EXI instrument, but from low-resolution cameras used by engineers to inspect the spacecraft.
In the movie below, the view is dominated by the solar panel of Tianwen-1, but the atmosphere of Mars and the surface topography are clearly visible.
Next week it will be the turn of the Americans. Their Perseverance rover will reach Mars on Thursday and will immediately attempt to land in a near equatorial crater called Jezero.