United Arab Emirates has announced a new ‘green visa’ scheme which allows foreigners to work in the country without the need for sponsorship by an employer. Holders of the new green visa will be able to work without company sponsorship, and can sponsor their parents and children up to 25 years old, officials said.
Last weekend, the United Arab Emirates announced a new ‘green visa’ scheme which allows foreigners to work in the country without the need for sponsorship by an employer. Foreigners in the oil-rich Emirates were so far generally given limited visas tied to their employment, with long-term residency very difficult to obtain. The new visa eases the residency requirements in an attempt to boost economic growth. Holders of the new green visa will be able to work without company sponsorship, and can sponsor their parents and children up to 25 years old, officials said. “It is heartening to see that the UAE’s leadership has decided to commemorate the country’s golden jubilee through a series of futuristic initiatives that outline the roadmap for the next 50 years. The new projects have the potential to transform the economy and drive growth in the country. The residency reforms, including the launch of the green visa, will have a tremendous impact on attracting and retaining top talent in all sectors, especially healthcare,” said Dr. Shamsheer Vayalil, NRI entrepreneur and chairman and managing director of UAE-based healthcare services group VPS Healthcare. Yusuffali MA, chairman and MD of Abu Dhabi based retail giant Lulu Group, too feels that the green visa is among some of the landmark initiatives being launched by the UAE leadership to attract, nurture and retain investors, entrepreneurs, professionals and experts. “The whole idea is to make UAE the global hub of talented and influential human resources, moving away from just being an oil driven economy. The focus is increasingly on AI, coding, space research, academic excellence.” This UAE already has a golden visa scheme, launched in 2019, that is issued for 5 or 10 years and offered to high-net-worth individuals, who bring large investments into UAE, as an opportunity to live in the country without having to renew their visa every year and without the need for a sponsor. “Through the golden visa scheme, the country’s leadership has already extended a wholehearted welcome to experienced medical professionals. The new reforms will continue to bring in all types of skilled personnel who are invaluable resources in fortifying the healthcare sector. These initiatives will also provide the necessary fillip to healthcare providers to improve their reach and quality. Strengthening the country’s human capital is a step in the right direction for the progress of the nation. Such projects will foster a sustainable future and unlock a new era of growth in the country,” Dr Vayalil said. The green visa targets highly skilled individuals, investors, businesspeople, entrepreneurs, as well as exceptional students and postgraduates, according to UAE’s minister of state for foreign trade Thani al-Zeyoudi. “This is another very progressive move by the UAE to attract the right talent pool to their already burgeoning economy. The fact that green visa holders can sponsor their children up to the age of 25 years and can remain in the country 180 days post the loss of a job will go a long way in adding a sense of permanency in the UAE to these visa holders,” says Shivaz Rai, CEO, Migrate World India, a company with headquarters in Dubai which helps Indians acquire citizenship and permanent residency through the investor route. He feels that the UAE is taking big strides to shape up its human resource, a move that complements its rapid economic development. Foreigners account for 90 per cent of the 10 million population in the UAE, the Arab world’s second-largest economy after neighbouring Saudi Arabia.
When barrages of charged protons and electrons erupted from the sun head our way, Earth’s magnetic field deftly deflects them around the planet. This buffeting generates shimmering, glowing curtains of color known as the aurora borealis in northern hemisphere’s polar regions, and aurora australis in the south.
That same phenomenon happens on Mars, too. But there it is not just the northern lights and southern lights, but also the equatorial lights, mid-latitude lights, eastern lights, western lights — all around the planet.
The Hope spacecraft launched by the United Arab Emirates and orbiting the red planet since February, has captured unique images of these dancing atmospheric lights, known as discrete auroras.
Mission officials released the pictures on Wednesday.
“It will allow new doors of study to be opened when it comes to the Martian atmosphere,” said Hessa al-Matroushi, the science lead for the first interplanetary mission by the U.A.E., “and how it interacts with the solar activity.”
The glows on Mars are not just at the top and bottom of the planet, because the magnetic field around the planet has largely died out as molten iron in the interior cooled. But parts of the crust of Mars that hardened several billion years ago when Mars did have a global magnetic field preserve some of that magnetism.
“They’re very patchy and unevenly distributed,” said Justin Deighan, the deputy science lead.
While Earth’s magnetic field is like one large bar magnet, on Mars, “it’s more like you took a bag of magnets and dumped them into the crust of the planet,” said Dr. Deighan, a researcher at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, which is collaborating with the U.A.E. on the mission. “And they’re all pointed different ways. And they have different strengths.”
The disjointed magnetic fields act as lenses to shepherd solar wind particles to different parts of the Martian atmosphere, but then they hit atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere, generating the glow of auroras.
Previous Mars orbiters have also observed the auroras, but Hope, with a high-altitude orbit that varies from 12,400 miles to 27,000 miles above the surface, can take in a global view of the night side of Mars.
Taking pictures of auroras was not part of the core science observations planned for the Hope spacecraft, which entered orbit around Mars in February. The mission is trying to study dynamics of the Martian atmosphere near the surface that influence how fast the atmosphere of Mars is leaking into space.
But even before the probe launched, scientists realized that one of the instruments, which makes observations in the far-ultraviolet part of the spectrum to measure levels of oxygen and hydrogen in the upper atmosphere, might be able to pick out the auroras as well.
“Our guess was, we would see something, but we weren’t sure how often it was going to be,” Dr. Deighan said. “What’s really fantastic is that we basically saw it right away, and with such clarity. It was unambiguous.”
NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft can also take similar pictures of the Martian auroras when its elliptical orbit takes it farther from the planet, and it can also directly measure and identify the solar particles creating the light show when it is passing close by. But it cannot make both measurements simultaneously.
By coordinating Hope’s aurora photographs with MAVEN’s particle measurements, planetary scientists might be able to put together a more complete understanding of the night lights of Mars.
“Having two spacecraft is really what you want for this,” Dr. Deighan said.
The vehicle will be another regional first — and it is smaller than any rover to have landed on the moon.
To date, China’s 310-pound (140-kilogram) Yutu rovers are the lightest to have made lunar landings, in 2013 and 2019. But the UAE’s will weigh less than a tenth of that. Around 20 inches (50 centimeters) long and wide, and 28 inches (70 centimeters) tall, it will weigh approximately 22 pounds (10 kilograms) with its payload.
Set to launch in 2024, the Emirates Lunar Mission aims to travel to a part of the moon that has never been reached by a rover. The exact landing site has not yet been revealed, but the objective is to better understand how lunar dust and rocks vary across the moon.
“If you think about the world and say that you visited 10 places, you can’t say that you know the entire Earth — so it’s the same with the moon,” says Sara Al Maeeni, a project scientist from the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai. “We’re expecting to see new things at the new site, (and) understand more about airless bodies.”
Airless bodies are space objects that lack an atmosphere, such as the moon, asteroids, and the planet Mercury. Without an atmosphere to protect them, their surfaces are constantly changed and weathered by solar radiation, meteoroids and dust.
The team hopes to closely examine the moon’s soil, recording its temperature, analyzing how lunar dust clings to different surfaces, and looking at the impact of solar radiation.
Named Rashid, in honor of the late Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, former ruler of Dubai, the rover will carry six scientific instruments onboard, plus systems for communications, power and movement.
Keeping the collective weight of the equipment under 22 pounds is a challenge in itself, says Al Maeeni, but building such a small rover creates other obstacles.
Big challenges for small rovers
The temperature on the moon varies dramatically between day and night. In the area that will be explored by the Emirates Lunar Mission, temperatures are expected to range from minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 200 degrees Celsius) at night, up to 176 degrees Fahrenheit (80 degrees Celsius), during the day, according to Al Maeeni. Smaller vehicles are more affected by external temperature changes.
“For smaller rovers to survive a full cycle of day and night, I would say it’s very difficult,” says Armin Wedler, a planetary exploration research scientist at the German Aerospace Center. “The rover cools down to the environmental temperature and then getting warmed up again might damage your system.”
The Rashid rover is expected to operate for only one lunar day — equivalent to 14 days on Earth — avoiding the cold of the lunar night, so it doesn’t need to go through the reheating phase.
However, as previous lunar missions have done, the team will attempt to reawaken the rover the following day, to test if its systems were able to survive the low temperatures. “It won’t fully operate, we’re just looking for any kind of response … even if it’s just a beep,” says Al Maeeni.
Another challenge is generating, storing and distributing enough power to keep all the systems running, given the limited space for solar panels and batteries. That means maximizing energy efficiency.
“For example, the communication system weighs around 400 grams in total and uses only 4 to 5 watts,” says Al Maeeni. “So establishing a signal this far from Earth, at almost 385,000 km (away), is really incredible.”
Read: Architects have designed a Martian city for the desert outside Dubai Rovers smaller than Rashid are in development, but none have yet made the journey to the moon. The 4.5-pound (2-kilogram) “Iris” is being built by students at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pennsylvania, in collaboration with NASA. It is hoped to launch this year on a private lunar mission.
Asagumo, a four-legged 2-pound (1.3 kilogram) spider-like rover built by UK company Spacebit, is also set to launch later this year.
Despite the constraints, building a small rover has its advantages.
Making space more accessible
“Any transportation to the moon of course, will require a lot of fuel and it’s costly,” Al Maeeni says, but small rovers are “much more cost-effective.”
And smaller rovers are likely to cause less damage to the moon’s surface during landing. A heavy impact could spread lunar dust all around the moon, because of the low gravity, which could contaminate samples, explains Laura Forczyk, owner of US-based space consulting firm Astralytical.
“The smaller the lander, the less likelihood of doing that kind of damage, or the easier it is to contain the dust once you’ve touched down,” she adds.
In the future, smaller rovers could also make space more accessible for other nations.
“We’re going to see more and more countries that have never done missions like this before being able to launch these missions,” says Forczyk. “Their budgets could be more constrained, so there will be smaller rovers,” but the research will still further scientific knowledge, she says.
But as well as the practicalities, for Al Maeeni, it’s about proving what is possible.
“We took on this challenge and we came up with Rashid — and this is already an achievement,” she says.
The first image of Mars snapped by the Al Amal, or Hope, spacecraft. The photo was captured at a distance of 15,500 miles from the planet’s surface.
Emirates Mars Mission/Mohamed Bin Zayed
Mars is the place to be this month. Two spacecraft have already entered orbit around the red planet: China’s Tianwen-1 got there on Feb. 10. And a day earlier, the United Arab Emirates made history by sliding the Al Amal (Hope) spacecraft into Martian orbit and becoming just the fifth country to reach Earth’s dusty, barren neighbor.
The first-ever Arab interplanetary mission has snapped a couple of images of Mars during its journey so far, but nothing quite like what it delivered early Sunday. From a distance of about 15,500 miles (25,000 kilometers), the probe’s camera — officially known as the Emirates eXploration Imager (EXI) — captured a picturesque view of Mars as a yellowed semicircle against the black curtain of space.
Some of Mars most famous features are visible in the image. Olympus Mons, the biggest volcano in the solar system peeks out at the terminator, where the sunlight wanes, while the three volcanoes of the Tharsis Montes dazzle under a mostly dust-free sky.
Olympus Mons is barely visible at the terminator, where night meets day. It’s circled here, in red.
Emirates Mars Mission
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The picture was shared in a tweet by Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, de factor ruler of the UAE.
“The transmission of the Hope Probe’s first image of Mars is a defining moment in our history and marks the UAE joining advanced nations involved in space exploration,” he tweeted Sunday.
The transmission of the Hope Probe’s first image of Mars is a defining moment in our history and marks the UAE joining advanced nations involved in space exploration. We hope this mission will lead to new discoveries about Mars which will benefit humanity. pic.twitter.com/TCM5yHTapH
— محمد بن زايد (@MohamedBinZayed) February 14, 2021
The Al Amal mission hopes to provide the most complete picture of the Martian atmosphere yet. It’s suite of instruments includes the EXI camera and both an ultraviolet and infrared spectrometer. Detailed observations will allow researchers to determine how particles escape from the gravity of Mars and reveal the mechanisms of global circulation in the lower atmosphere.
You can find previous images from the Hope probe at the Emirates Mars Mission website.
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The feat makes UAE the fifth space agency to reach the planet while its plans for a Mars settlement by 2117.
The United Arab Emirates’ first mission to Mars has entered the red planet’s orbit after a seven-month, 494 million kilometres (307 million miles) journey, allowing it to start sending data about the Martian atmosphere and climate.
Officials at mission control broke into applause on Tuesday, visibly relieved after a tense half-hour as Amal, Arabic for hope, carried out a “burn” to slow itself enough to be pulled in by the Martian gravity.
“Contact with #HopeProbe has been established again. The Mars Orbit Insertion is now complete,” the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) said.
“To the people of the UAE, to the Arab and Muslim nations, we announce the successful arrival to Mars orbit. Praise be to God,” said Omran Sharaf, the mission’s project manager.
Amal had to perform a series of turns and engine firings to manoeuvre into orbit, reducing its speed to 18,000kmph (11,200mph) from more than 121,000kmph (75,000mph).
Tuesday’s announcement makes UAE’s space agency the fifth to reach Mars.
Probes launched by China and NASA just after the UAE’s lift-off in July last year are also set to reach the planet this month.
The Emirates Mars Mission, which has cost approximately $200m, launched the Hope Probe from a Japanese space centre.
The Mars programme is part of the UAE’s efforts to develop its scientific and technological capabilities and reduce its reliance on oil. Its space agency has a plan for a Mars settlement by 2117.
It aims to provide a complete picture of the Martian atmosphere for the first time, studying daily and seasonal changes.
After a nail-biting 27 minutes, the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) first-ever interplanetary mission has successfully reached orbit around Mars.
The spacecraft, dubbed Hope, launched July 19, 2020, atop a Japanese H-IIA rocket, then spent seven months trekking to the Red Planet. Today (Feb. 9), Hope needed to fire its thrusters for nearly half an hour straight to slow down enough to slip into orbit around the Red Planet, from 75,000 mph to 11,000 mph (121,000 kph to 18,000 kph). Mission personnel on the ground could only watch what happened and hope for the best.
“This has been a remarkable journey of humanity,” UAE Space Agency chairperson Sarah Al Amiri said during preparations for the orbital insertion maneuver.
Related: The United Arab Emirates’ Hope mission to Mars in photos
Hope mission personnel celebrate the receipt of signal confirming the spacecraft arrived in orbit around Mars on Feb. 9, 2020. (Image credit: MBRSC/UAE Space Agency)
With the successful Mars orbit insertion, the UAE becomes the fifth entity to reach the Red Planet, joining NASA, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency and India. Today’s success also puts the $200 million Hope spacecraft on the bright side of grim Mars mission statistics: About half of flights to the Red Planet fail.
Mars orbit insertion was a critical step that, for Hope, required a 27-minute burn of its six thrusters that the mission team could not precisely practice in advance. Hope is now in a temporary orbit that it will retain for a few months as it powers on its instruments and settles into its new home.
Mission personnel plan to relocate the spacecraft to its science orbit in May. That science orbit will see the spacecraft circling high over the planet’s equator every 55 hours, a new orbit for a Mars spacecraft that will give Hope a unique opportunity to study large-scale atmospheric phenomena on Mars. The Hope mission is scheduled to last for a full Martian year (687 Earth days).
Related: The UAE wants to rewrite what we know about weather on Mars
The Hope spacecraft carries three instruments that will allow scientists to study the weather near the surface of Mars, the connections between different layers of the atmosphere, and how Mars loses atmosphere to space. Scientists leading the mission hope that this data will help them understand, for example, how dust storms at the surface of Mars affect atmospheric loss and how weather systems around the globe relate to each other.
The UAE has sped into the space sector: Hope launched a little more than a decade after the nation’s first Earth-orbiting satellite, DubaiSat 1, did so. The nation has pushed space exploration as a way to develop its science and technology know-how and to buffer its economy, which is largely built on oil.
In addition to the Hope mission, the UAE is recruiting new astronauts in the wake, plans to launch a technology lander to the moon in 2024, and has a century-long Red Planet strategy dubbed Mars 2117, which incorporates both terrestrial priorities and long-term exploration goals.
Hope’s Mars orbit insertion was the first of three Red Planet arrivals this month. Tomorrow (Feb. 10), China’s Tianwen-1 mission will conduct the same maneuver; the mission’s rover will attempt to land on Mars in May. Then, NASA’s Perseverance rover will attempt to land near Jezero Crater on Feb. 18.
The three arrivals bookend a rush to Mars that began in July, when all three spacecraft launched to take advantage of the alignment of Mars and Earth that made the journey most feasible. Visit Space.com for continuing updates about the trio of missions.
Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow uson Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
A robotic probe owned by the United Arab Emirates is preparing to jump into Mars orbit on Tuesday after launching from Earth last year. For mission managers in Dubai, it’s a nerve-racking climax in the UAE’s first mission to deep space. If successful, the Hope probe will survey the Martian atmosphere. The Emirati cabinet hopes the mission will also inspire a new science and technology sector as the Gulf state looks to wean its economy from oil dependence.
The Hope probe launched from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center last July as Earth and Mars aligned in their orbits around the Sun. Now, having traveled over 300 million miles, Hope is set to carry out an intricate and fully autonomous maneuver called a Mars Orbit Insertion at 10:30AM ET. Mission control in Dubai won’t know if the MOI has begun until 10:42AM ET because of a 22-minute roundtrip communications delay through NASA’s Deep Space Network. Manual, real-time control is impossible, so Hope will need to carry out these orbital dances on its own.
The MOI requires Hope to slow its cruising speed of 75,000 mph down to 11,000 mph in order to get swept up in Mars’ gravity. It will hit the brakes by firing all six of its Delta-V thrusters for 27 minutes. That should put the spacecraft into a “capture orbit” around the red planet. Five minutes later, mission managers will lose contact with Hope as it flies around the far side of Mars, cutting off radio signals for about 15 minutes.
“It’s been rehearsed enough times, we’ve thought of every single scenario that may go right or wrong, and that has been programmed into the commanding sequence,” Sarah al-Amiri, the deputy project manager for the Emirates Mars Mission, told The Verge.
Hope’s mission team of roughly 450 people have been designing and testing the Hope spacecraft over the past six years in preparation for this mission. If all goes well, the Hope mission will make UAE the fifth space-faring power to reach Mars after the United States, Soviet Union, European Space Agency and India.
Over the next two months, Hope will carry out a few more maneuvers to jump into a closer orbit around Mars. This will be key for carrying out its main objective: scanning the Martian atmosphere and capturing a global snapshot of the planet’s weather patterns. Hope will orbit Mars every 55 hours and capture a complete snapshot every nine days.
The Emirates Mars Mission’s Twitter account will be tweeting updates throughout the mission. The UAE space agency will also host a live feed of mission control in Dubai starting at 9AM ET before the maneuver begins at 10:30AM ET. Tune in then, to see if UAE nails its first interplanetary mission.
Artist’s illustration of the Hope spacecraft at Mars. Credit: MBRSC
The first interplanetary probe from the United Arab Emirates is set to enter orbit around Mars on Tuesday, the first of three robotic missions taking aim on the Red Planet this month.
The Emirates Mars Mission spacecraft, also known as Hope or Al Amal, is set to begin a 27-minute firing of its six main thrusters around 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT) Tuesday to slow down enough for Martian gravity to capture the probe into orbit.
If successful, the Hope orbiter will join spacecraft from NASA and the European Space Agency exploring Mars. But it is scheduled to receive company within days, with the scheduled arrival of China’s Tianwen 1 orbiter and rover Wednesday, and the landing of NASA’s nuclear-powered Perseverance rover Feb. 18.
The Hope, Tianwen 1, and Perseverance missions launched last July, rocketing into the solar system from spaceports in Japan, China, and Cape Canaveral. The trio of missions, all developed independently of one another, took advantage of a once-ever-26-months alignment of Earth and Mars to permit the direct trip to the Red Planet.
The roughly $200 million Emirates Mars Mission is the Arab world’s first interplanetary probe. Engineers and scientists from the UAE partnered with U.S. researchers to develop the spacecraft and its three scientific instruments, all aimed at bringing into focus the structure and dynamics of the Martian atmosphere.
“Anything that you want to attempt to do in space is hard,” said Pete Withnell, program manager for the Emirates Mars Mission at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “And something as sporty as getting a spacecraft into orbit around another planet is even harder.
“Many people may know the statistics,” Withnell said in a virtual press briefing in late January. “Less than half of those spacecraft that have been sent to Mars have actually made it successfully. So there are some statistics that are very sobering, but … this is a highly practiced, highly simulated, highly analyzed event on EMM. I cannot imagine being better prepared than we are right now. We are very fortunate to have a very healthy spacecraft, and everything is looking very good at the moment, so I’m optimistic.”
The Emirates Mars Mission launched July 19 from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan, riding a Japanese H-2A rocket procured by the UAE government from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The H-2A hurled the 3,000-pound (1,350-kilogram) Hope spacecraft on a high-speed trajectory escaping the bonds of Earth’s gravity.
After deploying its solar panels and completing a post-launch checkout, the spacecraft fired its thrusters several times to adjust its course toward Mars, setting the stage for the critical Mars Orbit Insertion, or MOI, maneuver Tuesday.
“Right now, the team has prepared as well as they can possibly prepare to reach orbit around Mars,” said Sarah al-Amiri, the Mars mission’s lead scientist and the UAE’s minister of state for advanced sciences.
“It’s useful to first consider the fact that the Al Amal spacecraft is moving at exactly the right velocity to get it from Earth to Mars,” Withnell said. “Once it arrives at Mars, it’s moving too fast to get into the relatively small gravitational field of that planet. So the spacecraft has to slow itself down. If we do nothing, then the spacecraft will simply stay in an orbit about the sun, much like an asteroid.”
The Mars Orbit Insertion burn will cap a 307 million-mile (494 million-kilometer) interplanetary journey. At the current distance of Mars, it will take radio signals about 11 minutes to travel from the Hope spacecraft back to ground teams gathered at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai.
“So what the spacecraft principally needs to do is slow itself down,” Withnell said. “So a very short time prior to MOI, roughly an hour, the spacecraft will rotate. It has spent the vast majority of its time in the last seven months either pointing its solar arrays at the sun, or its antennas toward Earth… But neither of those orientations work for MOI.
“So we need to reorient the spacecraft so that the thrusters are pointed in the right direction, and they then burn for 27 minutes, and take out roughly 1,000 meters per second (2,236 mph) of velocity relative to Mars,” Withnell said. “And then we’re captured into into what is called a capture orbit about the planet. So fundamentally that’s what Mars Orbit Insertion is all about.”
The UAE’s Hope mission is on the home stretch of a 307 million-mile (494 million-kilometer) journey to Mars. Credit: MBRSC
The Mars Orbit Insertion Burn is a pivotal moment in the life of the Emirates Mars Mission, which the UAE government first announced in July 2014. Along with the launch, the MOI maneuver is one of the two riskiest parts of the mission, according to David Brain, deputy science lead on the mission from LASP.
“Of course, there’s some worry there, but overall I feel confident. I feel like the team has practiced, the spacecraft has been tested. There’s a chance that it might not go well, and we’ll deal with that when it happens,” Brain said. “Mostly, I’m feeling some anticipation, and like there is about to be a firehose of data headed my way.”
Navigators on Earth say the Hope spacecraft is right on target for the insertion burn. Hitting the aimpoint after the more than 200-day trip from Earth is comparable to an archer hitting 2-millimeter target from a kilometer away, Withnell said.
Ground controllers back on Earth will be in “observing mode” during the one-shot Mars arrival maneuver, according to Withnell.
“We have no opportunity to have any meaningful real time impact on what’s happening,” Withnell said. “So a lot of the engineering emphasis has been on making the MOI event completely autonomous, which of course means that the spacecraft needs to have some level of smarts on-board to take care of maybe some events that are not completely expected. So to some degree, the spacecraft can take care of itself. If a thruster fails and whatnot, then the spacecraft actually knows how to react to that. So during the event, we are observers, and we get to see what’s happening. But we do not interact in real time.”
Engineers will be watching telemetry streams from the spacecraft to confirm it is pointing in the right direction, and then verify that the burn started on time. Ground teams will monitor the Doppler shift in the radio signals from the spacecraft to measure how much it has slowed down relative to Mars, and the Hope probe itself will be calculating its trajectory autonomously.
Assuming the burn goes according to plan, the Hope spacecraft will swing into a preliminary capture orbit ranging between 600 miles and 30,700 miles (1,000-by-49,380 kilometers) from Mars. The science instruments will collect their first data at the Red Planet in the coming weeks, setting the stage for Hope to steer into an operational science orbit by mid-May that ranges between approximately 12,400 miles (20,000 kilometers) and 26,700 miles (43,000 kilometers) above Mars.
During parts of each 55-hour semi-synchronous orbit, the spacecraft’s move at roughly the same speed around Mars as the planet’s rotation. That will give the orbiter’s science instruments sustained views of the same region of Mars in much the same way weather satellites in geostationary orbit provide uninterrupted views of the same part of Earth.
In addition to the LASP facility in Colorado — where the spacecraft was built — and Dubai’s Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center — where the probe will be operated — scientists from Arizona State University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Northern Arizona University contributed to the Hope mission.
The UAE’s government set the nation on a course for a Mars mission by outlining several objectives, including inspiration for Arab youth, revitalizing the UAE’s high-tech sector, introducing a culture for research and development, and aligning the mission’s arrival at Mars with the 50th anniversary of the country’s independence in 1971.
The Hope mission has already largely met those objectives, al-Amiri said.
The spacecraft was built for a fraction of the cost of NASA’s recent Mars orbiters, and still has the instrumentation necessary to investigate key unanswered questions about the Martian climate.
And the mission has gone a long way toward inspiring Arab youth, according to al-Amiri.
“Within a circle of people within the Arab region that I’m with, a lot of them are people that I’ve had discussions with even prior to the launch of this mission, and they were highly speculative with whether or not we will be able to achieve this objective,” she said. “And for them it’s been a reality check on what is possible from this region, and a reality check on how we can go about creating more and more positive change from the region. And I think a lot of the youth, especially over the course of at least the last six to seven years, have been really frustrated with instability and are looking for the creation of stability.
“Mars has been visible in the sky,” al-Amiri said. “Almost every child that I come into daily contact with … they’ll be able to point out Mars in the sky. I don’t think I’ve ever lived through a time where that was normal conversation in family settings.”
More than 450 people worked on the Emirates Mars Mission, according to UAE officials. About 200 members of the team have come from the UAE, and about 150 people from LASP in Colorado have worked on the project. Of the 200 Emiratis assigned to the mission, more than a third have been women.
This infographic illustrates the Hope mission’s journey to Mars. Credit: MBRSC
Brain said the instruments aboard the Hope spacecraft are similar to sensors flown on past space missions, but the UAE’s probe will go into a unique orbit that lingers higher above Mars.
The Emirates Mars Mission will put the instruments “into this new orbit that opens up all new science for us to investigate the Martian atmosphere,” Brain said. “So there are three aspects of the science orbit that are important. No. 1, it’s a very high altitude orbit, much higher than most other Mars science missions. That high-altitude orbit lets our instruments observe Mars from the global perspective. We’ll always be seeing roughly half of Mars, no matter where we are in the orbit when we look at the planet.
“No. 2, the orbit is fairly close to parallel with the Mars equator, and by this, I mean something like how the moon orbits Earth,” Brain said. “EMM will have a moon-like orbit around the planet unlike many other Mars spacecraft, which orbits over the top of the North Pole, and then over the bottom of the South Pole. They have highly inclined orbits that are very polar. Those kinds of orbits are great for science, but they force the spacecraft to always observe at the same time of day, 2 a.m., 2 p.m. 2 a.m., 2 p.m. When you lay that orbit on its side like the moon orbits the Earth, suddenly every time you go around the planet, you visit at every time of day. You get above midnight, you get above noon, you get above 3 p.m. You’ve seen all the times of day, which is great for our science.”
“The last part of the orbit that’s important here is that it still is elliptical. Sometimes the spacecraft is close to Mars, sometimes far from Mars,” Brain said. “So when it’s far from Mars, it’s moving slowly, it’s above one time of day, while Mars spins underneath. So it can observe many geographic regions at a single time of day. When the whole probe gets close to Mars it speeds up, and it can match the speed at which Mars is spinning on its axis. It can hover above a single geographic region like the big volcano Olympus Mons and study the atmosphere there at many times of day.”
Many of the science goals of the Emirates Mars Mission build on discoveries made by NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, which arrived at the Red Planet in 2014. Scientists have analyzed data from the MAVEN mission to confirm that the bombardment of the solar wind and radiation stripped away the Martian atmosphere, transforming the planet from a warmer, wetter world into the barren planet of today.
The Hope probe will track oxygen and hydrogen escaping from the Martian atmosphere into space, and will peer deeper into the planet’s atmosphere than MAVEN. Scientists want to investigate possible links between Martian weather and climate with the escape of atmospheric particles.
A color camera on the mission was developed by LASP at the University of Colorado at Boulder and MBRSC. Infrared and ultraviolet spectrometers were produced by LASP, Arizona State University and the University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with Emirati scientists.
“Overall, the science goal of EMM is to get a global understanding of sort of how the atmosphere works together, transport in the atmosphere, how weather above Olympus Mons influences weather completely on the other side of the planet, or at a different time,” Brain said.
“The first science objective is to understand the lower atmosphere of Mars in a global sense, and how the lower atmosphere of Mars varies geographically with time of day, and over the Martian seasons,” Brain said.
The Hope mission will also probe the outermost layers of the Martian atmosphere, where hydrogen and oxygen are escaping into space.
“We’ve learned from past missions that the loss of the atmosphere over time, over Martian history, we think, is important. But we need to do more to quantify that loss to understand how the rest of the atmosphere influences that loss to space,” Brain said.
The Hope spacecraft’s other primary science goal is to study the link between weather in the lower atmosphere and the conditions at the top of the atmosphere.
“If there’s a dust storm in the lower atmosphere, does atmospheric escape increase, and how?” Brain said. “If there is some change in the lower atmosphere, or a bunch of cloud formations, how does the upper atmosphere respond? In the past we’ve had missions that study the upper atmosphere, we’ve had missions to study the lower atmosphere, usually at just a single time of day, but we haven’t had a lot of observations that help us how understand how the atmosphere works from bottom to top, so EMM will provide that information.”
“We’re going to get complete coverage of the Martian atmosphere every nine Martian days, and by complete coverage, I mean we will have observed every geographic region at every time of day every nine days,” Brain said.
But first, the Hope spacecraft has to get itself into position to make those observations. That hinges on the Mars Orbit Insertion maneuver Tuesday.
What if something goes wrong?
“We continue on,” al-Amiri said. “It’s not a a one-off program. It is not something that you quit. We’ve had a taste of planetary exploration, and I think we will continue delving in for more.”
July 2020 was a huge month for Mars. Taking advantage of its nearby position in orbit, three missions departed the Earth on a seven-month journey to the red planet. Now those spacecraft — NASA’s Perseverance rover, the Chinese space agency’s Tianwen-1 and the United Arab Emirates’ Hope — are arriving at their destination. They’re poised to uncover the secrets our celestial neighbor hides within its atmosphere and barren plains and may even reveal relics of ancient life on the planet’s surface.
Although all three spacecraft will make it to orbit around Mars this month, NASA’s Perseverance (or “Percy”) gets to take center stage. It will be the only mission to land on the surface this month, with an expected arrival date of Feb. 18. Perseverance builds on an impressive history of interplanetary exploration, with its sibling rover Curiosity coming up on nine years on Mars, delivering breathtaking photographs and some puzzling data.
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That’s not to take anything away from the UAE’s Hope, or Al Amal, and China’s Tianwen-1. Both spacecraft are expected to perform Mars orbital insertion, or MOI, maneuvers within a day of each other on Feb. 9 and Feb. 10, respectively. Hope will remain in orbit and analyze the Martian atmosphere, but Tianwen-1 will attempt something only achieved by two other nations: landing on Mars’ unfriendly surface. China is expected to release Tianwen-1’s lander and rover duo sometime in May.
Here’s a recap of the journey to Mars and what we can expect this month.
First place
Every 26 months, the orbits of Earth and Mars line up in such a way that space agencies can take advantage of something known as a Hohmann transfer orbit.
“We do this kind of transfer orbit in order to use the least fuel,” James O’Donoghue, a planetary scientist with Japanese space agency JAXA, told CNET last year. “It’s like passing a football to a striker, you’ve got to aim where they’re going to be.”
In July 2020, everything lined up perfectly, and the three missions were out of here. Some fast facts:
The cadence of launches means Hope will reach Mars first in February. It’s expected to perform its MOI on Feb. 9, slowing down from 75,000 miles per hour to just 11,200. At approximately 7:42 a.m. PT, the bus-length probe will arrive “at” Mars and will begin to transition to the science phase of the mission. The maneuver is totally autonomous, because communication doesn’t quite work as quickly as it does here on Earth — the interplanetary phone call has a more than 13-minute delay, so Hope will be flying on its own from a set of preset instructions.
Tianwen-1’s arrival is slightly more mysterious. China’s space agency doesn’t typically reveal a lot of information about its activities, even for a potentially history-making mission such as this. According to Chinese news service CCTV, it will be the second craft to enter orbit, on Feb. 10.
Three spacecraft, seven months
Although the majority of the science will be performed when the spacecraft reach Mars, scientists and engineers have been testing the capability of their spacecraft on the cruise phase of the mission. The journey itself is a long one — covering about 300 million miles (~480 million kilometers) — and each agency has a chance to improve the trajectory of the craft for a perfect arrival. What else has been happening?
Last but not least
NASA’s Perseverance rover will touch down on Feb. 18. Though NASA’s got a good track record of landing on the red planet in the last few decades, there are no guarantees — Mars is hard.
“Success is never assured,” said Allan Chen, engineering lead on the entry, descent and landing phase of the mission, during a NASA press conference on Jan. 27. “That’s especially true when we’re trying to land the biggest, heaviest and most complicated rover we’ve ever built to the most dangerous site we’ve ever attempted to land on.”
The space agency expects to have the best footage of landing ever, with a suite of cameras and a microphone ready to capture the entry, descent and landing. It’s the first time we’ll be able to listen to the sounds of a Martian landing, providing a completely new sensory experience for avid Mars fans. Sadly, there’s no way we’ll be able to watch live, as such, but NASA will provide coverage of the moment. We’ve got a comprehensive guide to Mars landing day and what you can expect.
NASA Perseverance rover ready to explore the wilds of Mars
See all photos
How to watch NASA’s Perseverance landing on Mars
If you’re looking to catch Perseverance rover’s touchdown on Feb. 18, we’ve got you covered and you can access the stream right here. And if you’re interested in all the other great celestial events and rocket launches, we recommend syncing your calendar with CNET’s Space Calendar — you’ll never miss a launch again.
With less than two weeks before the country’s first-ever interplanetary mission slips into orbit around Mars, United Arab Emirates scientists can’t wait for the Hope orbiter‘s arrival.
The UAE launched Hope in July 2020, one of three missions taking advantage of an optimal window to head to the Red Planet, along with China’s Tianwen-1 mission and NASA’s Perseverance rover. Hope is an orbiter designed to study the atmosphere of Mars around the planet and from surface to space. The mission will conduct its Mars orbit insertion maneuver on Feb. 9 beginning at about 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT).
“Right now, the team has prepared as well as they can possibly prepare to reach orbit around Mars,” Sarah Al Amiri, chairperson of the UAE Space Agency, said during a news conference held virtually yesterday (Jan. 28). “We’re just counting down the final few days before we arrive to the Red Planet.”
Related: The United Arab Emirates’ Hope mission to Mars in photos
Fewer than half of Mars missions attempted to date have succeeded. In advance of the risky maneuver, which will involve Hope firing its thrusters for nearly half an hour to slow down enough to slip into orbit around Mars, the spacecraft is in excellent condition, mission personnel said.
“We are fortunate to have a very healthy spacecraft, and everything is looking very good at the moment,” Pete Withnell, Hope program manager at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics program, which partnered with the UAE on the mission, said during the news conference.
“I’m optimistic; that would be my primary emotion right now,” Withnell said. “But I can tell you many of the team are waking up at two o’clock in the morning in a cold sweat just thinking and rethinking about aspects.”
If all goes smoothly on Feb. 9, the UAE will notch a major accomplishment, becoming just the fifth entity to successfully reach Mars, after NASA, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency and India. (China may follow fast on the UAE’s heels; the nation’s Tianwen-1 mission will complete its own Mars orbit insertion a day after Hope does.)
Before beginning the Hope mission, the UAE’s space experience was limited to satellites in Earth orbit; the nation’s first astronaut spent a week on the International Space Station in the fall of 2019. But in 2017, the country launched a century-scale Mars-focused initiative meant to build an oil-free economy and bulk up the nation’s technical sector.
Related: The UAE wants to rewrite what we know about weather on Mars
The UAE designed the Hope mission’s science goals in conjunction with the international community and built international partnerships, particularly with the University of Colorado, to complete the spacecraft, then hired a Japanese Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIA rocket to execute the launch on July 19.
Hope is meant to spend one Martian year, or nearly two Earth years, studying the Red Planet; that timeline will begin in May. During the mission, the spacecraft will orbit high over the planet’s equator to study the weather at the surface and how the layers of the planet’s atmosphere interact.
Even as Hope was making the long trek out to Mars, the UAE announced its next mission beyond Earth orbit. In 2024, the nation intends to launch its first lunar rover, Rashid, which will focus on developing and evaluating space exploration technologies. As with the Hope mission, the UAE will contract out Rashid’s launch rather than develop its own rocket technology.
But for the Hope team, the focus is all on Mars and all on the challenges of arriving safely.
“I think everyone on the mission understands the emotional roller coaster,” Al Amiri said. “Every point of celebration is followed by several points of worry, waiting for the next point of celebration.”
“I wish I could put it into words, but I’m probably every feeling that you can possibly think, both positive, negative and neutral.”
Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow uson Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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