UAE: Hope Probe completes three years orbiting Mars

UAE: Hope Probe completes three years orbiting Mars

Hope Probe — the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission has been orbiting Mars for three years now, providing a complete picture of the Martian atmosphere and its layers. Around 2.9 terabytes of atmospheric data have been collected and shared freely with the global scientific community, giving them fresh insights into the global map of the Red Planet. Hope Probe was launched from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Centre at 1.58am (UAE time) on July 20, 2020. It entered Mars’ orbit seven months later, on February 9, 2021, to conduct its mission to provide a complete atmospheric map of Mars. But its mission was not solely focused on scientific or technological objectives, the spacecraft also became a symbol of hope (Al Amal in Arabic) for the region. For Emirati scientists and leaders, this mission signified a fresh chapter for a region with a notable legacy in astronomy. “It was an indescribable feeling,” Sarah Al Amiri, Minister of State for Public Education and Future Technology and Chairwoman of the UAE Space Agency (erstwhile Minister of State for Advanced Technology and Deputy Project Manager and Science Lead of the UAE's Mars Mission of the Hope Probe) had said after the launch. Since its arrival in