The United Arab Emirates will be half a century old next year – reason to celebrate. And of course – where would that be better than in space ?! “It’s called Hope, like ‘Hope’,” says Mohsen Al Awadhi about the first Mars probe in the Emirates. The engineer works in the space systems department of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai. This center has approximately the role of the country NASA for the USA or the THAT for Europe.
The United Arab Emirates chose the atmosphere of Mars as the focus of its mission. Because Hope will not land, nor will the probe look for previous riverbeds or possible lives – because that would be the norm. “We don’t want to repeat what other missions have already done in detail,” smiles Al Awadhi. However, only a few countries have so far examined the atmosphere. “So that’s a real challenge!”
One year the whole picture
“The goal of this mission is to find out what has happened to the atmosphere over time,” added Salem Al Marri, the deputy director of science and technology, also on Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center. That’s why Hope will observe the same spots on the surface several times a day for the first time. For example, earlier probes would have examined the planet at 6 a.m. and then again 24 hours later. “But then you still don’t know what is going on at 4 o’clock,” Al Marri points out. “For the first time, we will map a complete daily cycle of the Martian atmosphere.”
The project
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Hope should not only look at identical spots on the surface at different times of the day, but also spread their observations throughout the year. Because as long as a Mars year, the planned life of the probe is. “When the seasons change, we can observe changes,” said Al Awadhi. “So far we have not understood the effects of spring, summer, autumn and winter on the atmosphere.”
What happened to the atmosphere of Mars?
The goal is to explain the loss of the atmosphere. Why did it escape almost completely into space? What happened to Mars once? “If we understand that, it will also help us to understand the earth better,” predicts the Arab space engineer. Because life on earth depends on the nature of its atmosphere.
The same applies to Mars. Its atmosphere was probably denser billions of years ago than it is today. It would have enabled liquid water on the surface and possibly life in it. “The atmosphere of Mars is so interesting because it is so thin today,” believes Salem Al Marri. “We want to know whether it was once life-friendly, but why it is so thin today and contains practically no oxygen at all, so that people could not survive there.”
Ice clouds on the trail
And because these are so many tasks, the Arabs needed partners. One of their goals was to develop the probe together with universities in the United States. “This is how we learn things that we have not yet mastered ourselves, for example in research,” admits Salem Al Marri. “With this mission, we have increased the scientific competence of universities in the United Arab Emirates, especially in the direction of planetary science.”
The universities of Colorado, California and Arizona developed the three instruments on board the Mars probe together with their Arab colleagues. On board are two spectrometers – one for infrared, one for ultraviolet light – and an optical camera. They are supposed to observe dust movements in the Martian atmosphere, the formation of ice clouds, the temperature distribution and the spread of water vapor and ozone.
On the 50th anniversary of the founding of the state, the Emirates on the Persian Gulf seem to have recognized the signs of the times – and they are no longer on oil, but are obviously in the vastness of space.
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