The United Arab Emirates' Hope mission, which arrived at Mars on Feb. 9, 2021, will conduct a detailed examination of the Martian atmosphere.
Also known as the Emirates Mars Mission, Hope is an orbiter designed to spend one Martian year (two Earth years) looking at the Red Planet's atmosphere, studying how it eroded over time until Mars no longer was able to host liquid water on the surface.
Click through this Space.com gallery to learn about why the Arab country embarked on such a bold mission, and what this will mean for the country's science, engineering and education communities.
Hope mission personnel celebrate the receipt of signal confirming the spacecraft arrived in orbit around Mars on Feb. 9, 2020.
With the successful Mars orbit insertion, the UAE becomes the fifth entity to reach the Red Planet, joining NASA, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency and India.
This is the first time any Arab nation has attempted a Red Planet mission, and the development happened quickly as UAE leaders first considered a Mars orbiter in 2014.
(Image credit: MBRSC)
Looking at the spacecraft bus
The UAE has decided to ramp up its own spacecraft-building technologies — such as building Hope's "bus," or main structural component seen in this picture — to diversify the nation's industries.
The nearly complete Hope Mars orbiter undergoes checks during the final launch preparations on June 6, 2020.
The team brought on international partners to help get the spacecraft ready efficiently, including the University of Colorado at Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
The partnership benefitted from the university's expertise on the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, which is also studying the Martian atmosphere with different science questions.
(Image credit: MBRSC)
Hope is ready!
Some spacecraft engineers pose before the Hope orbiter on Feb. 18, 2020. The UAE built the spacecraft domestically, while asking for international expertise to meet their goal of performing new science at Mars with their very first mission.
Hope will ride a Japanese H-2A rocket to orbit, lifting off from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan.
This booster has already sent aloft at least one interplanetary mission — Japan's Akatsuki spacecraft, which studied the planet Venus. Other prominent missions launched on this rocket type include Selene (aka Kaguya) that studied the moon, the Ikaros solar-sailing spacecraft, and the Hayabusa 2 mission that returned a sample from the asteroid Ryugu in late 2020.
(Image credit: MBRSC)
Cruising to Mars
This artist's illustration shows the Hope orbiter making its way into space on top of the H-2A rocket.
The satellite has a total mass, with fuel, of 3,300 lbs. (1,500 kilograms), according to NASA, and is about the size and weight of a small car.
The spacecraft is expected to last for at least two Earth years in Mars' orbit, but its mission can be extended to 2025 if the spacecraft remains in good health and funding is available for the mission extension.
(Image credit: MBRSC)
Complicated maneuvers in space
This illustration shows in detail all the mission steps required to get Hope into orbit around Mars.
Shortly after launch, it unfolded its solar panels to recharge its batteries for the trip to Mars. As Hope approached the Red Planet, it used its star trackers to navigate and to enter the correct orbit.
The final orbit will be a 55-hour-long, slightly elliptical path around Mars that measures roughly 12,500 by 26,700 miles (20,000 by 43,000 kilometers). At its widest, the orbit of Hope will be 10 times the diameter of Mars.
(Image credit: MBRSC)
Martian instruments
There are three main instruments on the Hope orbiter:
The Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer (EMIRS) will look at the Martian atmosphere's dust, ice clouds, water vapor and temperature profile.
The Emirates Exploration Imager (EXI) will image the Martian atmosphere to look for dust, water ice and ozone abundance.
The Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS) is a spectrometer that will examine changes in the atmosphere and emissions of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon monoxide, among other things.
(Image credit: MBRSC)
EMIRS closeup
This is a closeup of the Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer (EMIRS).
In collaboration with Arizona State University, the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai designed EMIRS to measure the dust, ice clouds, water vapor and temperature profile of the Martian atmosphere. These observations will add on to other missions' work at the Red Planet and lead to a greater understanding of planetary atmospheres more generally.
(Image credit: MBRSC)
Hope, riding aboard a a Japanese H-IIA rocket, launched successfully on July 19, 2020 from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. This was a historic launch for the UAE, as it is their first mission launch to Mars.
Crowds, launch technicians and official attendance were strictly limited due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, with everyone wearing masks to minimize the risk of transmission.
Aside from the new precautions implemented to contain the pandemic, the launch went as planned and the spacecraft successfully began its seven-month journey to Mars.
(Image credit: MBRSC)
Masked officials applaud the successful launch of the United Arab Emirates' Hope mission on July 19, 2020. The masks were necessary to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic, which posed a worldwide threat that March during the last phases of launch planning. The launch, including new precautions implemented to contain the spread, was successful.
(Image credit: MBRSC)
This is an image of Mars taken by the star tracker on the UAE's Hope mission in August 2020 and shared worldwide on social media. As the probe was still far away from the planet ahead of its expected February 2021 arrival, Mars appeared as a tiny dot.
"The Hope probe is officially 100 million km [60 million miles] into its journey to the Red Planet," Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, prime minister of the UAE, wrote on Twitter on Aug. 24, 2020. "Mars, as demonstrated in the image captured by the probe's star tracker, is ahead of us, leaving Saturn and Jupiter behind."
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Former Staff Writer, Spaceflight (July 2022-November 2024)
Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., was a staff writer in the spaceflight channel between 2022 and 2024 specializing in Canadian space news. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years from 2012 to 2024. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House, leading world coverage about a lost-and-found space tomato on the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, "Why Am I Taller?" (ECW Press, 2022) is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams.
