Hope Probe captures new observations about Mars atmosphere

Hope Probe captures new observations about Mars atmosphere

ABU DHABI — The Emirates Mars Mission Hope Probe captured new observations about Mars atmosphere in its third batch of scientific data collected by the probe’s instruments during its mission in Mars’ orbit, between Sept. 1 and Nov. 30, 2021. The data from the third batch included more than 57 gigabytes of information, images, and data about the Red Planet’s atmosphere, which were captured by the probe’s scientific instruments, making the total data released by the Hope Probe equivalent to 827.7 gigabytes. Within the data, a special high cadence imagery observation took place using the Emirates Exploration Imager (EXI) camera. The observation was designed to attempt to capture motion and evolution in the atmosphere, where it observed high-density clouds on Nov. 22, 2021. During the period in which the third batch of data was collected, the Mars Solar Conjunction phase took place, which paused communication, science observations and data collection. This was due to the blocked line-of-sight communication between Earth and missions around Mars, with Earth and Mars being on the opposite sides of the Sun. During this phase, which happens almost every two years, the Sun emits hot, ionized gas, which interfered with radio signals when communicating with the