UAE鈥檚 Hope probe off on Mars mission
Print Edition
A UNITED Arab Emirates spacecraft rocketed into blue skies from a Japanese launch center yesterday at the start of a seven-month trip to Mars on the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission.
The liftoff of the Mars orbiter named Amal, or Hope, starts a rush to fly to Earth’s neighbor that is set to be followed in the next few days by China and the United States.
At the space center in Dubai, people watching were transfixed by the liftoff, then cheered and clapped.
Amal blasted off from the Tanegashima Space Center aboard a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ H-IIA rocket on time at 6:58am after being delayed twice by weather.
Mitsubishi later said the probe successfully separated from the rocket and was now on its solo journey to Mars.
The probe was sending signals that would be analyzed later but everything appeared good for now, Omran Sharaf, the UAE Mars mission director told journalists in Dubai about an hour and a half after liftoff.
Amal is set to reach Mars in February 2021, the year the UAE celebrates 50 years since its formation. In September that year, Amal will start transmitting Martian atmospheric data, which will be made available to the international community, Sharaf said.
The Amal spacecraft, along with its launch, cost US$200 million, according to Sharaf.
“The UAE is now a member of the club and we will learn more and we’ll continue developing our space exploration program,” UAE Space Agency chief Mohammed al-Ahbabi told a joint online news conference from Tanegashima.
A newcomer in space development, the UAE has put three Earth observation satellites into orbit. Two were developed by South Korea and launched by Russia, and a third — its own — was launched by Japan.
The UAE project is one of three racing to Mars, apart from China’s Tianwen-1 and Mars 2020 of the US, taking advantage of a time when the Earth and Mars are nearest.
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