United Arab Emirates becomes the first Arab country to reach Mars

Shafaq News/ 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 at 7:42 p.m. Tuesday, Emirates time, sent its signal back to Earth just over half an hour later. The ground control team at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai erupted in cheers. According to CNBC

The feat is monumental. Experts estimated the chance of successfully entering Mars orbit at about 50%, since more than half of all Mars missions actually fail.

The crucial time window was a terrifying and suspenseful 27 minutes during which the Hope probe had to dramatically slowdown from its speed of 100,000 kilometers per hour (62,137 mph) to 18,000 kph by firing its six thrusters for 27 minutes exactly.

This used up almost half of its fuel, enabling it to be caught by Mars’ gravitational pull and enter into its orbit. There was then a roughly 11-minute communication delay back to Earth as the scientists and engineers involved in the project — which include some 200 Emiratis — waited in tense anticipation to find out whether the mission was a success.

The operation had to be executed with flawless precision, and the stakes high — the current time period during which Earth is closest to the red planet occurs only once every two years.

This 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.

That time will enable it to create the first full map of the Martian atmosphere, with the help of three highly specialized instruments developed by the Emirati team: a highly sophisticated camera to photograph Mars and study its lower atmosphere, an ultraviolet spectrometer that will detect the planet’s levels of carbon monoxide and oxygen, and an infrared spectrometer that will measure Martian dust, ice clouds and water.

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.

The UAE government has launched various campaigns to expand the country’s science, technology, engineering and math sector, and it views its growing space program as an important part of that. It’s also the first country to have a minister of artificial intelligence and is investing heavily in its own indigenous defense industry.