UAE’s Hope Mars mission heralds a new era of global space exploration

“It’s about driving a lot of change within the UAE economy that should have a solid science base today more than ever,” said Sarah al-Amiri, Emirati Minister of State for Advanced Sciences and Chair of the UAE Space Agency. “The best way to do that, from what we’ve been experimenting with as a nation, is a space exploration mission.”

At the most critical moment of its 306 million mile journey from Earth, which began in July with the launch of a Japanese rocket that launched it into space, the Hope spacecraft was scheduled to launch its thrusters for 27 minutes on Tuesday. board would fire to reach a stable. orbit around Mars. The maneuver had to be controlled autonomously by onboard computers, as the 22-minute delay in radio transmissions between the vessel and Earth made ground control impossible.

“It is the first time that we will use all six thrusters and our entire control system,” said project manager Omran Sharaf of the Emirates’ Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai prior to the maneuver. “My feelings? Very nervous. Extremely nervous. Worried. Scared. But I also have faith in it. Fortunately. Proud.”

Hope burned more than half of its fuel and would slow itself down enough to be conquered by gravity from Mars, slowing down from about 75,185 miles per hour – about 21 miles per second – to about 11,185 miles per hour. If successful, the spacecraft will establish itself in an elliptical orbit around the planet’s equator, where it can scan the entire surface of Mars every nine days, mission officials said.

If the spacecraft’s orbit is off target or if more than two of its thrusters fail, the probe could miss Mars completely.

If all goes well, Hope will join an international fleet of six spacecraft from India, the European Space Agency and the US, all of which are actively studying the desert planet from orbit – and more to come. Hope’s mission is scheduled for two years, but is renewable.

The Chinese Tianwen-1 spacecraft is expected to enter Mars orbit on Wednesday, ahead of a landing attempt in May. NASA’s Perseverance rover is expected to touch Earth’s surface on Feb. 18 to become the fifth rover to successfully place the agency on Mars.

The $ 2.7 billion Perseverance mission will look for the first signs of life beyond Earth. China’s efforts are focused on the country’s first landing on another planet, a milestone in its growing national space program.

In the summer of 2022, the European Space Agency and Russia’s Roscosmos Space Corp. launch a Mars mission to land a rover to search for water.

The Japanese space agency plans to launch two Mars missions by 2024. One of them is to land on Mars. The other will visit the planet’s moons to collect rocks and other surface material for return to Earth.

India plans to launch another Mars mission in 2025.

“Countries that have not traditionally been exploration countries are booming and supporting it with budgets,” said Jim Bridenstine, who stepped down as NASA administrator on Jan. 20, of the growing number of spaceflight nations. “There is no better diplomacy than exploring our solar system together.”

Despite its otherworldly goals, the Hope mission reflects some of the sober ambitions of Emirati leaders, Ms. Amiri said. They expect the space exploration experience to reinvigorate innovation in science and technology for the federation of seven territories, or emirates, on the Persian Gulf. Before oil exports began in the 1960s, the economy of what is now the UAE was mainly based on fishing and a pearl industry.

The UAE’s first satellite was put into orbit in 2009. That vessel, dubbed DubaiSat-1, was built in South Korea and launched from Kazakhstan aboard a converted Russian ICBM. In 2018, the first satellite designed and built entirely in the Emirates was launched into orbit. Last year, the UAE’s first astronaut drove a Russian Soyuz space capsule into orbit for an eight-day stint aboard the International Space Station.

“With the lower cost of access to space, we have become increasingly stronger,” said Ms Amiri.

To develop skills for space flight design, precision manufacturing and deep space operations, the Emirati Hope project team has drawn on expertise at a number of US research institutions, including the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, which has a long history of building spacecraft, as well as Arizona State University and the University of California, Berkeley. The satellite was launched aboard a Japanese H-IIA rocket from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center, which is located on an island off the coast of the Japanese island of Kyushu.

“It was absolutely jointly designed,” said Christopher Edwards, a remote sensing specialist at Northern Arizona University, of the Hope spacecraft. ‘I have never experienced anything in the space program so far. There is a huge training aspect to it and a huge collaboration aspect that cannot be compared with anything else. “

Dr. Edwards, a veteran of NASA Mars missions, was working on the design of a spectrometer aboard Hope.

About two-thirds of the Emirates Hope mission team are under the age of 35. A third are women. While they may be newcomers to space flight, they will provide a useful perspective for interplanetary exploration, Mr Sharaf said.

“As a newcomer, you don’t have to carry the baggage of 50 years of space flight,” he said. “We have something to add.”

Write to Robert Lee Hotz at [email protected]