Millions in the Arab world and the world awaited the historical moment when it entered the orbit of the Red Planet
"Probe of Hope" is the first meteorological observatory of Mars .. and the first image will send it within a week
The ground control station in Al Khawaneej, Dubai receives the first signal from the probe at 8:08 PM.
WAM
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Millions of people in the Emirates, the Arab world and the world watched with anticipation of the historic moment of the successful entry of the "Probe of Hope" to the capture orbit around Mars, yesterday evening, through live coverage transmitted by television stations, websites and social media platforms, as part of a major event organized in the vicinity of Burj Khalifa, which was covered in The side of the main landmarks in the country and the Arab world is the color of the red planet.
The event shed light on the UAE project to explore Mars from idea to implementation, the UAE’s journey with the dream of space and how to achieve it through the training and preparation of Emirati scientific cadres with a great deal of experience and competence.
The event also witnessed a dazzling laser display on the front of the Burj Khalifa, which was implemented with high-level technology, showing the journey of the Hope Probe, the stages that the project went through, and the efforts of Emirati cadres who participated in the realization of this dream.
The Minister of State for Advanced Technology and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Emirates Space Agency, Sarah Bint Youssef Al-Amiri, gave a detailed presentation in Arabic and English of the most important stage of the journey of the Probe of Hope, which is the stage of entering the Mars orbit, as it is the most important and most dangerous, and is considered decisive in what will be the future. The expeditionary mission.
The event included direct video contact with the operations team and engineers at the ground control station at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center in Al Khawaneej, Dubai, where the Director of the Emirates Mars Exploration Project, Eng. Omran Sharaf, presented the latest updates and developments, first-hand, regarding the trajectory The Hope Probe in the final minutes of its journey in preparation for entering Mars orbit.
The decisive moments of the stage of entering the capture orbit around the red planet began at 7:30 pm UAE time, with the Hope Probe autonomously, according to the programming operations that the work team had previously conducted before its launch, to start operating its six reverse propulsion engines «Delta V »To slow his speed from 121,000 km to 18,000 km per hour, using half of the fuel he carried, in a 27-minute operation.
The fuel burning process ended at 7:57 pm, so that the probe could safely enter the capture orbit, and at 8:08 pm the earth station in Al Khawaneej received a signal from the probe for the successful entry stage into Mars orbit, so that the UAE wrote its name in prominent letters in the history of space missions to explore the planet the Red.
With its success in completing the stage of entry into the capture orbit around Mars, the Hope probe has completed four major stages of its space journey since its launch on July 20, 2020 from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan on board the H2A missile, which are in order: the launch stage and the stage Early operations, the navigation stage in space, and the entry stage into orbit.
It has two phases remaining before it: the transition to the scientific orbit, and finally the scientific stage, where the probe begins its exploratory mission to monitor and analyze the climate of the Red Planet.
With the success of the stage of entering the capture orbit, the Hope probe began its first day around Mars, and the ground station team was able to communicate with the probe to ensure that this stage, which was the most accurate and dangerous stage of the space mission, did not affect the probe and its subsystems and scientific devices that it carries .
According to what is planned, this process may take from three to four weeks, during which the team will be in constant contact with the probe 24 hours a day, through successive shifts, noting that the probe will be able during this stage to take the first picture of Mars within a week of its arrival. Successfully to orbit capture.
After confirming the efficiency of the probe and its subsystems and scientific equipment, the project team will start the implementation of the next stage of the probe's journey, which is to move to the scientific orbit through a set of operations to guide the probe's path to transport it to this orbit safely, using more fuel that the probe carries on board, and it will follow. Accurate monitoring of the probe's location to ensure it is in the correct orbit, and after that, comprehensive calibration processes will be made for the probe's systems (original and subsidiary), similar to those that the team had conducted after the launch of the probe on the twentieth of last July, and the calibration operations may extend and reset systems The probe is about 45 days, as each system is calibrated separately, noting that each communication process with the probe at this stage takes between 11 and 22 minutes due to the distance between the two planets of Earth and Mars.
After the completion of all these operations, the last stage of the probe's journey begins, which is the scientific stage scheduled to begin next April. The Hope probe will provide the first complete picture of the climate of Mars and the weather conditions on its surface throughout the day and between the seasons of the year, which makes it the first observatory. Aerial of the Red Planet.
The mission of the probe will last a full Martian year (687 Earth days), extending until April 2023, to ensure that the three scientific devices that the probe carries on board monitor all the required scientific data that humans have not previously reached about the climate of Mars, and the mission of the probe may extend for a year Another Mars, if needed, to gather more data and reveal more secrets about the red planet.
The Hope Probe carries three innovative scientific devices on board, capable of conveying a comprehensive picture of the climate of Mars and its different layers of atmosphere, giving the global scientific community a deeper understanding of the climate changes that the Red Planet is witnessing and studying the causes of the erosion of its atmosphere.
These devices, which are a digital exploration camera, an infrared spectrophotometer and an ultraviolet spectrophotometer, monitor everything related to how Mars weather changes throughout the day and between the seasons of the Martian year, in addition to studying the causes of the disappearance of hydrogen and oxygen gases from the upper layer of the Martian atmosphere. , Which constitute the basic units for forming water molecules, as well as investigating the relationship between the lower and upper layers of the atmosphere of Mars, and observing weather phenomena on the surface of Mars, such as dust storms, and temperature changes, as well as the diversity of climate patterns according to the various topography of the planet.
The hardest minutes
The entry stage into Mars' orbit, which took 27 minutes before the probe successfully reached its specified orbit around the red planet, is one of the most difficult and dangerous stages of the mission. This stage is known as the "blind minutes", as it was controlled automatically without any interference from the earth station. The probe throughout this time by itself.
At this stage, the work team focused on inserting the Hope probe into the capture orbit around Mars safely, and in order to successfully complete this mission, half of the fuel in the probe tanks was burned to slow it down to the extent that it could be inserted into the capture orbit, and the fuel burning process continued using propulsion engines. Reverse (Delta V) for 27 minutes to reduce the speed of the probe from 121 thousand km / h to 18 thousand km / h, and given that it is a precise process, the control commands were developed for this stage through a deep study by the team in which they identified all the scenarios that It can take place, in addition to all improvement plans, to have the orders ready for this critical moment.
After the success of this mission, the probe entered its initial oval-shaped orbit, where the duration of one cycle around the planet in it would reach 40 hours, and the altitude of the probe during its presence in this orbit would range from 1000 km above the surface of Mars to 49,380 km.
The probe will continue in this orbit for several weeks to re-examine and test all the subsystems on board the probe before moving to the scientific stage.
Later, the sixth and final stage, which is the scientific phase, will begin, during which the "Hope Probe" will take an elliptical orbit around Mars at an altitude of between 20 thousand and 43 thousand kilometers, and the probe will take 55 hours to complete a full orbit around Mars.
The orbit chosen by the Hope Probe team is very innovative and unique, and will allow Hope Probe to provide the scientific community with the first integrated picture of the atmosphere and weather of Mars within a year.
The number of "Hope Probe" contact times with the ground station will be limited to only twice a week, and the duration of one contact ranges between 6 and 8 hours. This stage will extend for two years, and it is planned that the probe will collect a large set of scientific data about the Martian atmosphere and its dynamics.
This scientific data will be provided to the scientific community through the Scientific Data Center of the Emirates Mars Exploration Project.
A challenging experience
Over the course of more than six years of work on the "Hope Probe", designed, implemented and constructed from scratch, the project witnessed numerous challenges, surpassing them represented an added value to it.
The first of these challenges was the completion of the historic national mission of designing and developing the probe within six years, so that its arrival coincides with the state's celebrations of its fiftieth national day, while similar space missions take between 10 and 12 years to be implemented, as the Al-Amal probe team succeeded from highly qualified national cadres. In this challenge, they transformed the unlimited support of wise leadership into an additional incentive that pushed them to do more.
The Golden Jubilee Project
The journey of the UAE project to explore Mars, "The Hope Probe", actually began as an idea seven years ago through an exceptional ministerial retreat called by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, on Sir Bani Yas Island at the end of the year 2013, where His Highness led an intellectual storm with members of the Council of Ministers and a number of officials in which he presented with them a number of ideas to celebrate the golden jubilee of the establishment of the Union in the year, and the retreat on that day adopted the idea of sending a mission to explore Mars, as a bold project, and an Emirati contribution to the scientific progress of mankind, in an unprecedented way. .
This idea turned into reality when, in 2014, His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the State, issued a decree establishing the Emirates Space Agency, to start work on a project to send the first Arab probe to Mars, called "The Hope Probe". The Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center Implementation and supervision of the design and implementation stages of the probe, while the agency funds the project and oversees the necessary procedures for its implementation.
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"The Hope Probe" studies the causes of the disappearance of hydrogen and oxygen gases from the Martian atmosphere.
- The Hope Probe data gives the scientific community a deeper understanding of the climate changes in it.
The scientific stage of the probe's space mission begins next April and extends to April 2023.
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