UAE continues to look to stars as it marks three years since Hope probe reached Mars

▶ The spacecraft has played a major role in helping scientists to develop a global map of the Red Planet

The UAE is marking three years since its Hope space probe reached Mars.

The milestone made the Emirates the first Arab nation to place a craft in the planet’s orbit and only the fifth worldwide.

Hope, a spacecraft the size of a small car, entered the Martian orbit on February 9, 2021, and has since been capturing data on the planet’s atmosphere and on one of its moons, called Deimos.

The observations have helped scientists all over the world to enhance their understanding of Mars, including how the planet, which is believed to have been habitable a long time ago, lost its atmosphere and can no longer support life.

On Thursday, the UAE Space Agency teased a video on X that celebrated “three years of providing the global community with unparalleled scientific information and data”.

Dr Dimitra Atri, a planetary scientist at New York University Abu Dhabi, is one of the scientists using Hope’s data, including to create a global map of the planet.

“The enthusiasm displayed by Emirati and international students for this research has been nothing short of inspiring,” he told The National.

“Their contributions working on Hope data have significantly enriched our understanding of the Mars and raised new questions for researchers around the globe.

“The remarkable camera of the EXI instrument, combined with the expansive coverage provided by the Hope probe, enabled us to create a stunning global mosaic and photographic atlas of Mars.”

Dr Atri’s mapping efforts have been integrated into the Mars24 software, which was developed by Nasa’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, and JMars, essential tools used by Mars researchers.

Hope offered remarkable global coverage of Mars’ atmosphere, revealing the intricacies of daily and seasonal weather cycles.

This was possible thanks to the initial orbit the craft was placed in, allowing it to “see” the planet from much higher above than all previous missions to the Red Planet.

The key findings by the probe include the observations of the elusive auroras, known as discrete auroras.

These are a unique phenomenon in the Martian atmosphere, which help to provide insights into the interactions between solar particles and the planet’s magnetic fields.

“It helped in shedding light on the mechanisms potentially responsible for the erosion of its atmosphere,” Dr Atri said.

“This erosion led to the transformation of Mars from a once Earth-like planet to the cold, arid desert landscape we observe today.”

Hope tracked a massive dust storm on Mars for more than two weeks, allowing it show how quickly they can spread on the planet.

It monitored a rapidly evolving dust storm in December 2021, as it expanded to several thousand kilometres.

Scientists hope that by studying the storms they can gain further insight into how they are drying out the planet by helping Martian water escape the atmosphere.

In February last year, the UAE Space Agency moved the Hope probe to a new orbit around Mars to study one of the planet’s tiny moons.

Deimos, which measures only 6.2km in radius, is the smaller of the two moons that orbit the Red Planet.

The agency released a striking image of the moon in April, offering invaluable data on its orbit, surface features and composition. Billionaire Elon

The enthusiasm displayed by Emirati and international students for this research has been nothing short of inspiring DR DIMITRA ATRI

Scientist at NYU Abu Dhabi

Musk, founder of SpaceX, posted a message on X to congratulate the UAE on the findings after an influencer shared a story by The National.

It was announced in February last year that the country’s Mars mission would be extended by a further 12 months.

But the agency could decide to keep the mission going, depending on operational considerations and the condition of the spacecraft.

Even if the mission ends, the probe has played a significant role in helping to shape the country’s space programme.

The public-private partnership model that was used during the mission will be used again to help develop the nation’s next big project – a mission to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Many universities across the country are now also offering space-focused programmes to students.