The UAE on Wednesday unveiled its plan to send an unmanned probe to Mars in 2021 to study the atmosphere of the Red Planet, The initial details of the mission named Al Amal, or "Hope", were unveiled at an official event attended by Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid, vice-president and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Dubai. Shaikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, was also present on the occasion.
The blueprints and science goals for the Mars mission have been revealed for the first time. The probe, named “Hope”, will create mankind’s first integrated model of the Red Planet’s atmosphere.
Launching ‘Hope’
The Emirates Mars Mission is being planned and managed in the UAE by an Emirati team.The Emirates Mars Mission team currently comprises 75 Emirati engineers and researchers and will grow to more than 150 by 2020.
The probe will be a compact spacecraft having the size and weight of a small car. It will blast off in a launcher rocket, then detach and accelerate into deep space. It will reach a speed of 126,000 km per hour for the 600 million kilometer journey around the sun to Mars, which will take around 200 days.
The probe will orbit the Red Planet until at least 2023, with an option to extend the mission until 2025. It will send back more than 1,000GB of data to be analysed by teams of researchers in the UAE, and shared freely with more than 200 institutions worldwide for the benefit of thousands of space specialists.
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