• Science: We are moving to Mars!
  • Geology: how Mars ceased to resemble Earth

When at 22:43 Spanish time on Thursday, the Hope Mars Mission takes off from the Tanegashima space center in Japan towards the red planet, Sarah al Amiri will have fulfilled a dream. The first Arab interplanetary mission, whose launch was scheduled for Tuesday but has been postponed for two days, is closely linked to Al Amiri, the young minister of Advanced Sciences of the United Arab Emirates who wanted to study space science until she ran into the lack of opportunities in the confines of your country. «I am really happy that my children grow up in a time when there are many more opportunities to choose. They will witness how the Emirates sends a mission to Mars, "acknowledges the minister in an interview withPaper .

Al Amiri, who participated in the construction of the first earth observation satellites launched by the Arab country , has been one of the souls of a project built in record time that represents the emergence of a new contender in the expensive space race. “We have spent the past six years designing, developing, producing, assembling, integrating, and testing the probe. And we have done in compliance with the timetable set by the government in early 2014. The minimum similar missions have been in a decade, "boasts this i NFORMA 33 .

Designed at the Mohamed bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai, it will take seven months for Hope Mars to enter the orbit of the second smallest planet in the solar system, and thereafter it will remain active for a full Martian year, equivalent to one year, 321 days and 7 Earth hours, in search of new investigations into the atmosphere of Mars. “The ship and the designed instruments have three objectives. The first is to understand the climatic dynamics of Mars' lower atmosphere by measuring the temperature of the planet's surface and that lower layer. The second is knowing how hydrogen and oxygen spread to space and loss in space because scientists theorize that one reason for Mars' transformation from a wet to dry and arid planet is that atmospheric loss. The third is to be able to link what happens in the lower atmosphere, such as a dust storm or the formation of ice clouds , with the loss of hydrogen and oxygen in the upper atmosphere of Mars, "reveals the main face of an initiation project to the Emirati space sector is assisted by the American universities of Colorado, the Arizona state university and the Berkeley space science laboratory.

“Exploration will help us better understand how a planet that is Earth's cousin , in some way similar to ours, evolved into the climate we see today. It is vital to understand how planets are transformed and to relate it to the current climate change taking place on Earth ”, Al Amiri advances.

With a full budget that the Emirati authorities hope to unveil in due course, the Hope Mars Mission has dealt with the vicissitudes of the coronavirus without changing the date of its launch one iota, on the premise that the mission will be fully operational in December 2021, during the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the country , a federation of seven emirates blessed by the happiness of oil. “The pandemic and the closure of international transport have presented an additional challenge that we never thought was a plausible risk. When the coronavirus started, the ship was still in the Emirates. At the end of February we launched the contingency plan . We decided to send the probe ahead of schedule, after completing all critical tests and moving the rest to Japan. We halved the team deployed to Japan to have a second team in reserve, and the designated members traveled two weeks ahead of schedule to meet quarantine, "said Al Amiri, who will attend the launch from the operating room set up in Dubai.

The mission will be completed in 2023 and it is not yet known how much it has cost.

“It is a unique mission in many ways. One of them is the budget that has remained unchanged from the beginning . We have created a new way of designing and developing missions at a relatively lower cost than the projects put into orbit until now, "underlines the minister. " The mission will be completed in 2023 when all the scientific data is available," he adds.

Embarking on the mission to go to Mars has increased the complexity of our capabilities by five. It has forced the team to rapidly develop their skills. The amount of risk that a project like this represents is much higher than building a terrestrial observation satellite, "admits Al Amiri, the architect of a sector born out of nowhere in a desert through which until half a century ago only nomadic populations traveled and adventurers. "It has been a remarkable journey of learning and development," he confesses.

Late Tuesday, first thing in the morning in Japan, the Hope Mars - with its skeleton loaded with 800 kilos of hydrazine fuel - will open a 142 million kilometer journey. "The launch will only be the beginning of a new phase of the remains," warns the minister. Just the beginning of the Emirati race in space. Its emir, Mohamed bin Rashid Al Maktum, has recognized dreaming of establishing the first human settlement on the Red planet back in 2117 . "It is a sample of our long-term commitment to address one of the questions that assail us: How to go and survive on another planet?", He concludes.

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