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After 27 appalling minutes, the first ever interplanetary mission of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) managed to reach its orbit around March.
The spaceship, nicknamed Hope, launched on July 19, 2020 atop a Japanese H-IIA rocket, then spent seven months walking to the Red Planet. Today (February 9), Hope had to fire her thrusters for almost half an hour at a stretch to slow down enough to orbit the Red Planet from 75,000 mph to 11,000 mph (121,000 km / h at 18,000 km / h). Mission field staff could only watch what had happened and hope for the best.
“It has been a remarkable journey for humanity,” said United Arab Emirates Space Agency President Sarah Al Amiri, during preparations for the orbital insertion maneuver.
Related: Photos of the UAE’s Hope Mission to Mars
With the successful insertion of the orbit of Mars, the UAE becomes the fifth entity to reach the Red Planet, joining NASA, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency and India. Today’s success also puts the $ 200 million Hope spacecraft on the safe side of Grim statistics of the mission to Mars: About half of flights to the red planet fail.
Inserting Mars’ orbit was a critical step that, for Hope, required a 27-minute burn of her six thrusters that the mission team couldn’t practice precisely in advance. Hope is now in a temporary orbit that he will hold for a few months as he powers up his instruments and settles into his new home.
Mission staff plan to move the spacecraft to its scientific orbit in May. This scientific orbit will see the spacecraft spin high above the planet’s equator every 55 hours, a new orbit for a Mars spacecraft that will give Hope a unique opportunity to study on a large scale. atmospheric phenomena on Mars. The Hope mission is expected to last a full Martian year (687 Earth days).
Related: UAE wants to rewrite what we know about the weather on Mars
The Hope spacecraft carries three instruments that will allow scientists to study the weather near the surface of Mars, the connections between the different layers of the atmosphere, and how Mars is losing the atmosphere to space. Scientists leading the mission hope this data will help them understand, for example, how dust storms on the surface of Mars affect atmospheric losses and how weather systems around the world relate to each other.
The UAE has launched into the space segment: Hope was launched just over a decade after the first satellite to orbit the Earth, DubaiSat 1, did so. The country has been pushing space exploration as a way to develop its scientific and technological know-how and to buffer its economy, which is largely based on oil.
In addition to the Hope mission, the UAE is recruiting new astronauts in the wake, plans to launch a tech lander on the moon in 2024, and has a century-old red planet strategy called March 2117, which incorporates both terrestrial priorities and long-term exploration objectives.
Hope’s Mars orbit insertion was the first of three arrivals from Red Planet this month. Tomorrow (February 10), China Tianwen-1 the mission will perform the same maneuver; the mission’s rover will attempt to land on Mars in May. Then, NASA’s Perseverance rover will attempt to land near Jezero Crater on February 18.
The three arrivals end a Mars Rush that began in July, when the three spacecraft were launched to take advantage of the alignment of Mars and Earth that made the trip more achievable. Visit Space.com for ongoing updates on the trio of missions.
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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