New Delhi (NVI): The United Arab Emirates (UAE) 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 UAE time, and sent its signal back to Earth just over half an hour later.
“204 days and more than 480 million kms later, the #HopeProbe is now in the Capture Orbit of #Mars,” the official Twitter account of the Hope Mars Mission tweeted shortly afterward.
204 days and more than 480 million kms later, the #HopeProbe is now in the Capture Orbit of #Mars #ArabsToMars
— Hope Mars Mission (@HopeMarsMission) February 9, 2021
Experts estimated the chance of successfully entering Mars’ orbit at about 50%, since more than half of all Mars missions actually fail.
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.
In addition to this, UAE, which founded its space agency only in 2014, becomes the fifth country to join an elite club of nations that have successfully sent missions to Mars: the United States, the Soviet Union, Europe, and India.
The Hope probe is the first to complete its journey out of three Mars missions aiming to breach the planet’s orbit this year; NASA’s Perseverance rover and China’s Tianwen-1 mission also launched in July to take advantage of the period of proximity between Earth and Mars.
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.
-CHK
