UAE’s Hope Mission

UAE’s Hope Mission

Part of: GS Prelims and GS- III – Sci & Tech; Space

In news

• The UAE’s first mission to Mars entered its orbit, seven months after the UAE’s ‘Hope Probe’ was launched from Tanegashima in Japan.

Key takeaways 

• With this, the UAE has become the fifth country after the US, Russia, China, the EU, and India, to reach the Martian orbit.
• The unmanned spacecraft is called ‘Al-Amal’ — the Arabic word for hope.
• The historic event was timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the unification of the UAE’s seven emirates.
• Carrying three instruments, including a high-resolution camera and a spectrometer, the spacecraft is on an orbital mission to collect data on Martian climate dynamics and help scientists understand why Mars’s atmosphere is decaying into space.
• Hope is the UAE’s fourth space mission and first interplanetary one. 
• The previous three were all Earth-observation satellites.
• Its overall mission life is one Martian year, which is about 687 days on Earth.