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After six years of hard work and careful planning by a young team of Emirati scientists and engineers at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai, the time has come for them to prepare to launch the Hope spacecraft on a trip of seven. month on Mars, in the first such mission in the world and Arab moments. History for everyone involved.
Aisha Al-Sharafi, engineer at the Emirati Mission to Mars, says: “We have some really disappointed feelings, moving between excitement, happiness and gratitude for this opportunity and between tension, anxiety and terror. But there is one emotion that dominates at the end, which is the ‘hope.”
The head of the UAE Space Agency, Dr Ahmed Belhoul Al Falasi, also expresses a joy that cannot be contained: “We try to reserve our feelings, but we can’t contain our happiness. We’ve spent six years preparing, we’ve passed the first stage of the launch, but we’re still waiting for the second stage, which is the important part.”
The successful launch provided a short-lived respite as the team prepared for the next set of potentially successful or failing moments, starting with the spacecraft separating from the rocket, as it pushed at 34,000 km / h to Mars.
According to Aisha Al-Sharafi, the engineer of the propulsion system of the Al-Amal probe, the first minutes of the operation are crucial: “After five minutes of separation, we will deploy the solar panels. After about fifteen to thirty minutes of separation, we will have the first signal, then we will turn on the reactive control engines so that we can stabilize the spacecraft and catch the sunlight. ”
Every mission objective was successful on launch night, said Imran Sharaf, Mission of Hope project manager: “We conducted the launch operation and separated the spacecraft from the launcher. This happened about an hour after the start of the operation. Right after that, about 20 minutes later, we were able to receive the first signal. of the spaceship. “
Although the Emirati mission was carried out locally, it would not have been possible without a commitment to international cooperation, and here he adds an honor, explaining: “Instead of building all the facilities from scratch locally, we used and rented facilities available around the world. Instead of building our own space network, we are using the NASA network, we have connected it to our operating room in Dubai. We purchased the services of the Japanese company MHI to launch “The spacecraft. So the mission is very international and the reason for our success is international cooperation.”
But the mission met its share of challenges.
According to Mohsen Al-Awadi, systems engineer for the UAE Mars Exploration Project, challenges exist and the team is trying and succeeding in overcoming them: “We anticipate and think about things that we might be faced with in regards to risk taking, planning etc., Covid-19 was certainly not there. **At first … we had to ship the spacecraft early to Japan, about a month ahead of schedule, and that in itself was a huge challenge the team was able to overcome. **
The ultimate goal of the mission is to collect data that will be freely shared with everyone. For these scientists, this is the most exciting part of all, said UAE Minister of Advanced Science Sara Al Ameri: “Science does not belong to one nation. That is its beauty. It is something that exists for all of us. The fun part begins with science, it begins with scientific data collection, verification and the validity of the processing we performed so that we can export our datasets to the public and scientists around the world for the purpose of working on and benefiting from it. It also motivates the science team to launch and start We really hope to achieve a scientific discovery by the end of the year two thousand and twenty with the data that will be collected in that year.
Whatever discoveries Mars has in store for them, this mission has already given the Emirati team enormous practical knowledge and hope that access to the Red Planet is within their grasp.
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