The probe "Al-Amal" or "Hope" ("Hope" in English), the first Arab interplanetary mission, was able to fly less than 110 km from Deimos, an irregular rocky body of barely 12 km in the shape of a bean which, with its larger companion Phobos, is one of the two moons of Mars.
This is the first time since the Viking Mars mission in 1977 that a spacecraft has flown so closely over this rarely observed natural satellite, said Monday the leaders of the "Emirates Mars Mission" (EMM) at the assembly of the European Geosciences Union taking place in Vienna.
During the Deimos flybys, which began last January, Hope was able to conduct observations of unparalleled precision, thanks in particular to its EXI camera that provides high-resolution color images in several wavelengths.
These data revealed the "far side" of the small moon that orbits about 23,000 km from Mars, and whose composition has never been studied.
"We are not sure of the origins of Phobos and Deimos," Hessa Al Matroushi, the EMM mission scientist, said in a statement.
"A long-standing theory is that these are asteroids" from the asteroid belt that have been "captured" in the orbit of the Red Planet, she said.
But the close observations of the probe "Hope" lean rather for a planetary origin of this moon. Like its companion Phobos, the celestial body has "infrared properties closer to the basalt rocks of Mars than those of the meteorite that fell near Tagish Lake" in Canada, "often used by analogy to study Phobos and Deimos," according to Christopher Edwards, scientist of the EMIRS instrument.
"Hope" will continue its flybys of Deimos throughout 2023 to collect more data, says the space agency of the United Arab Emirates, which has decided to extend the Martian mission by another year.
In February 2021, the United Arab Emirates placed its "Hope" probe in orbit around Mars, becoming the first Arab country to achieve such a feat.
The wealthy Gulf nation also plans to send an unmanned rover to the moon by 2024.
© 2023 AFP