The mission to Mars is but a first step to learn; Emirati engineers and scientists are eager to achieve this goal.
This is what His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, said during the unveiling ceremony of the mission today.
According to the engineers involved in the project, the probe, named Al Amal (Hope) will be launched in July 2020 to reach Mars in 2021 which will coincide with the UAE’s 50th anniversary of the union of the emirates. The 60 million-kilometre, 9 months long journey makes UAE the ninth country to join the ‘global Martian club’ alongside the US, Russia, China, and others.
Our science mission is to produce the first ever truly global picture of the Martian atmosphere. This is the first holistic study of the Martian climate and how the layers of atmosphere fit together, Omran Sharaf, Emirates Mars Mission Project Manager, said in the video of the Emirates Mars Mission launched during the unveiling of the UAE Mars mission.
An all Emirati team of 150 engineers and scientists will work on the mission. All data that will be sent from the prober will be made available to 200 universities and research institutes worldwide. The team will work on analysing the Martian climate in order to better understand the Red Planet and the challenges it poses.
The UAE’s investments in space technologies already exceed the AED20 billion mark.
Scientists on earth will use the data that will be sent by the probe to build a complete dynamic picture of the Martian climate. This is something that has never been seen before, Sharaf said.
How it works (GulfNews):
The spacecraft will be launched in the nose cone of a rocket. The rocket must exceed 40,000km/hr to break out of Earth’s gravity.
Then once in space, the centre booster in rocket stages will fire up. The fire thrusters will speed up its flight at 100,000km/hr. Then the spacecraft will separate from the launcher.
The spacecraft will unfold its solar panels and point toward the sun to charge the batteries.
Al Qasimi said when the spacecraft reaches Mars, it will have to slow down to 14,000km/hr in order to enter Mars’ orbit.
“This will be a tense time at mission control in the UAE. The thrusters must fire for 30 minutes at precisely the right time. If anything goes wrong, the spacecraft will pass Mars and the mission will fail.” Sharaf said.
Since there is no GPS in deep space, the spacecraft will have to find Mars using star trackers to navigate using patterns of constellations, similar to how our ancestors used the stars to navigate their way in the desert and at sea.
Controlling the spacecraft from Mars will be impossible as sending signals to a spacecraft millions of miles away will take approximately 40 minutes to reach. The spacecraft will be sophisticated enough to make its own decisions.
Details about the program can be found here.
