The Hope (in Arabic, Al Amal) space probe of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Space Agency was successfully launched on Sunday from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Centre (located on an island in Kagoshima prefecture, in the far south of the country) by a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIA rocket. The launch had originally been scheduled for July 14 but had been delayed several times by bad weather. Hope will take seven months to reach Mars.

Hope is the Arab world’s first ever interplanetary mission. The spacecraft will orbit the Red Planet studying the dynamics of its atmosphere, both diurnally and seasonally and at the global level. It will provide data on all levels of the Martian atmosphere – lower, middle and upper – which will be used to uncover the mechanisms responsible for the upwards movement of particles and energy in the atmosphere and the subsequent escaping of those particles from Mars’ gravity.

Hope/Al Amal’s mission was developed in accordance with the agreed objectives of the international Mars Exploration Programme Advisory Group (Mepag). This body is the forum through which space-faring nations agree what scientific goals should be pursued to increase our knowledge of Mars. The 2020 Mepag Goals document lists as one of its four objectives the acquiring of knowledge about the history and processes of the Martian climate. The Hope mission is mainly focused on this goal.

The probe carries three instruments. The Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer will study the lower Martian atmosphere in the infrared wavelength band. The Emirates Exploration Imager will also study the lower atmosphere of Mars, but in the visible light and ultraviolet bands; it will further study water ice and ozone in the atmosphere and take high-resolution images of the planet and atmospheric phenomena. The Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer will collect data on oxygen, hydrogen and carbon monoxide in the Martian atmosphere. 

To reduce the risks, the Hope probe was developed with the assistance of three US universities who have researchers with experience in Mars missions. The probe itself was built in the UAE. The total cost of developing, assembling and launching the spacecraft came to about $200-million. Hope is expected to study Mars for one Martian year, equivalent to two Earth years.

The Mars probe is not the UAE’s first spacecraft, but it is the country’s first such vessel intended to leave Earth orbit. The country was first involved in a satellite launch in 2009, which was done jointly with a South Korean company. The UAE’s first domestically developed and assembled satellite, KhalifaSat, was launched in 2018.