UAE Mars probe countdown is ‘proceeding on course’
▶ Official says Hope probe is on schedule to orbit Red Planet on the country’s 50th anniversary
In less than two years, a UAE spacecraft will make a historic journey to Mars, where it will orbit the Red Planet in time for the Emirates’ 50th anniversary.
Yesterday, officials from the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre said everything was on track for the launch of the unmanned Hope probe in Japan between July and September next year.
The mission will become the Arab world’s first to Mars.
The 62 million kilometre journey to the Red Planet from an island in south Japan will take between seven to nine months.
Speaking at the second annual Science Event at space centre in Dubai yesterday, Omar Hussain, lead mission design and navigation engineer for the Emirates Mars Mission, said it was too soon to narrow down the launch date from a three-month window.
“It is too early to talk about a specific date just yet but everything is on track and there have been no delays,” said Mr Hussain, 29, an Emirati.
Hope will orbit Mars and transmit back data that will tell scientists how the planet’s seasons are affected by sunlight.
“We will become a serious player in the deep-space race,” Mr Hussain said. “The findings of the Hope probe will help us contribute to the scientific community in a major way.”
The positive news for the Mars mission came as it was announced that plans to send the first Emirati astronaut into space would be delayed.
It had been hoped that either Hazza Al Mansouri, 34, or Sultan Al Neyadi, 37, the finalists selected from more than 4,000 submissions for the Astronaut Programme, would be heading to the International Space Station in April on board the
Soyuz rocket.
But the project took a setback when a Soyuz failed to launch in October, upsetting the timetable for future flights.
Salem Al Marri, assistant director general for science and technology at the space centre, said the launch date would be announced in coming months.
The UAE’s historic Mars mission is on track, with the satellite probe to the Red Planet scheduled to arrive in time for the country’s 50th anniversary.
The Hope probe will be launched from Japan between July and September next year, and will orbit Mars in 2021 as planned, said the lead engineer for the ambitious project.
Omar Hussain, lead mission design and navigation engineer for the Emirates Mars Mission, speaking at the Science Event 2019 held at Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai, said the team have overcome challenges along the way.
“It is too early to talk about a specific date just yet but everything is on track and there have been no delays,” said Mr Hussain, 29.
“Speaking for myself, it has been challenging because I had to switch from planning for Earth-based projects to interplanetary missions.
“It took a lot of education to get to that point as I had never done a mission that goes beyond the Earth’s lower orbits. I had to study how I would get the spacecraft from Earth to Mars.”
While the Hope probe will not be the first satellite to transmit data of Mars’ environment, it will offer something completely unique, Mr Hussain said. “We are going to study the atmosphere of Mars throughout all the Martian seasons,” he said. “This is the first mission of its kind.
“There have been missions that studied the atmosphere of Mars but they were in different orbits. Our orbit allows us to study how the seasons on Mars are affected by the light of the Sun.”
Mr Hussain said the data that the Hope probe sent back would make the country a major player in the 21st-century space race.
“We will become a serious player in the deep space race,” he said. “The findings of the Hope probe will help us contribute to the scientific community in a major way.
“The data that the UAE produces will help to come up with new scientific discoveries that will benefit the entire world.”
It was also confirmed at the conference that the first Emirati astronaut will go to space “later than hoped”.
Either Hazza Al Mansouri, 34, or Sultan Al Neyadi, 37, was due to fly to the International Space Station in April, on board the Soyuz rocket.
But the project suffered a setback in October when the Soyuz MS-10 failed to launch, which affected the timetable for future flights.
The National reported in October how a joint inquiry by Nasa and Russian space agency Roscosmos was likely to cause delays for the project to send the first Emirati into space.
“We will be having a press conference in the coming months announcing the new date,” said Salem Al Marri, assistant director general for science and technology at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre.
“The flight will take place later than we would have hoped because of the incident.”
Visitors to the Science Event were also treated to new footage of the Emirati astronauts undergoing micro gravity training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, northeast of Moscow.
The video showed Al Mansouri and Al Neyadi wearing heavy suits that have to be removed within 15 seconds in the case of an emergency.
The training included how to cope with the dizziness and sickness caused by spinning around when returning to the Earth.