Mars mission wins global praise as UAE joins space race top table

Mars mission wins global praise as UAE joins space race top table

Russian, French and Indian space agencies have hailed the UAE's achievement as the Hope Probe successfully entered the orbit on Mars on Tuesday.

Jean-Yves Le Gall, resident of the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), the French space agency, said the world has begun to view the UAE as a rising power in the field of space exploration.

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Russia, the first country to land a spacecraft on Mars five decades ago, said the UAE's Hope Probe reaching the destination point itself was a "huge milestone".

In a statement issued to state news agency WAM, Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency, congratulated Emirati colleagues.

And the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which had successfully sent a spacecraft to Mars in 2014, said the UAE will join the global top table to jointly plan future Mars mission following the success of the Hope Probe.

The UAE's Hope Probe on Tuesday completed a complex manoeuvre - the most critical part of the mission - that saw the spacecraft rapidly reducing its speed from 121,000km/h to 18,000km/h to enter Mars' orbit.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister