Kurdistan’ President congratulates the Emirati people for Mars mission

Shafaq News / Kurdistan’ President, Nechirvan Barzani congratulated the Emirati people for Mars mission, named the Hope probe.

Barzani said in a tweet, "I congratulate the people and leadership of the United Arab Emirates for accomplishing the Mars mission, this important achievement is a source of inspiration for people across the Middle East and beyond."

The United Arab Emirates has made history as the first Arab country to reach Mars.

The Emirates Mars mission, named the Hope probe, reached the red planet which makes the UAE only the second country to ever successfully enter Mars’ orbit on its first try, despite attempts being made since the 1960s. The only other country to have done so is India.

The Hope probe, a $200 million project called Al-Amal in Arabic, was launched on July 20 from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Station and has now culminated its journey to Earth’s neighbor. It will now spend one Martian year — equivalent to 687 days on Earth — studying and gathering data on the red planet’s atmosphere.

The UAE’s ambitious project was six years in the making and has made the small Gulf sheikhdom only the fifth country in the world to reach Mars. These missions normally take at least 10 years to design and plan, said Sarah al-Amiri, minister of state for advanced technology and chairwoman of the UAE Space Agency.

The Emirates Mars Mission partnered with a team from the University of Colorado Boulder to build the spacecraft, drawing on expertise from the university’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. But the oil-rich Gulf country itself has spent years investing in space research and development, founding its own space agency in 2014 after launching satellites in 2009 and 2013 developed jointly with South Korean partners.