UAE’s Hope probe will reach Mars TODAY – entering orbit at 16:00 GMT

The United Arab Emirates will become the first Arab nation and only the fifth nation overall to place a spaceship in orbit around Mars later today.

Named Hope, the probe is expected to start the complex process of entering Martian orbit at 16:00 GMT – following a 500 million km race from Earth.

It will beat out the NASA and Chinese spaceships, also on their way to the Red Planet – but unlike those crafts, this one won’t be landing as it is an orbiter probe.

The goal of the mission is to complete an accurate survey of the Martian atmosphere, answering questions about the loss of oxygen and gasses to space. 

China’s orbiter and rover combo – named Tianwen-1 – will arrive into Martian orbit tomorrow, followed by NASAs Perseverance rover on February 18. 

The UAE, China and the US took advantage of a period last July when Mars and Earth were favourably aligned to launch their exploratory missions to the Red Planet. 

Hope launched first on July 19 from Japan and is designed to take readings from the Martian atmosphere over the span of an entire Martian year – or two Earth years. 

Also known as Amal – which is Arabic for Hope – this is the first deep space mission for the Gulf nation, which has long term ambitions for a Martian colony.

It will sit in an especially high orbit – 13,500 to 27,000 miles above the Martian surface and provide regular updates on the Martian weather.  

‘We are quite excited as engineers and scientists, at the same time quite stressed and happy, worried, scared,’ said Omran Sharaf, project manager for the UAE, in anticipation of the first of the three scheduled arrivals. 

There are currently six spacecraft operating around Mars – three from the US, two from Europe and one from India. The UAE hopes to make it seven with its mission. 

If successful in inserting itself into orbit around the Red Planet, the UAE will become just the fifth nation to place a spacecraft in orbit around the planet.

Entering Martian orbit isn’t an easy process, according to the UAE scientists behind the seven month mission to get the probe to the Red Planet.

The probe will fire its rockets to rapidly decelerate to achieve Mars Orbital Insertion (MOI) – it will then maintain this capture orbit, calibrating and testing its science instruments, before moving to its science orbit. 

During the MOI the spacecraft is rotated to position it for a deceleration burn of 27 minutes, and slowed down from its cruising speed of 121,000 km/h to something nearer to 18,000 km/h.  

The burn to begin the deceleration will start at around 1530 GMT.

The stresses on the spacecraft of all engines firing at once are far beyond those at launch and it will be completed with a 22-minute two-way radio delay from Earth, requiring the probe to be highly autonomous.

Around 10 minutes after the MOI burn, the Hope probe flies into the dark side of Mars and after the Martian gravity captures it – it will enter a capture orbit.

The capture orbit takes the spacecraft from a distance of 1,000 to 49,380 km from Mars’ planetary surface.

In this phase instrumentation will be tested and the spacecraft will, over the coming two months, transition to its science orbit – due to be completed by April.

The probe has a 20,000–43,000 km elliptical science orbit, and completes one orbit of the planet every 55 hours.

While it will be in daily contact with Earth during the capture orbit phase, in its science orbit, contacts will take place two to three times a week.

Each pass will be six to eight hours long – which is the only time the UAE team will have to download any data and send the probe any new updates or instructions. 

Hope will provide the first planet-wide picture of Mars’ weather system and climate throughout the Martian year, a UAE spokesperson said.

‘The data collected during this time will be open to scientists globally, contributing to humanity’s shared understanding of our second-closest planet.’ 

Both the UAE and China are newcomers to Mars, where more than half of Earth’s emissaries have failed.

Sarah bint Yousef Al Amiri, chairwoman of the UAE Space Agency, said she hopes the mission will be in a position to share data by September.

‘One of our primary objectives is to ensure that we share the data as soon as we are comfortable, as a science team, that the data is usable by scientists and the data is correct.

‘We hope to release the data at the latest in the beginning of September, and it will be data from the capture orbit that has been captured around Mars, and also from the beginning of our science phase.’

She added: ‘A lot of what we’re hoping to discover from the data of this mission is new, and this is a highly complimentary mission to other missions so we truly hope that others’ missions around Mars will utilise also our data.

‘And there’s actually talks with a few teams, who have spacecrafts around Mars, to see how we can further collaborate and expand all of our science so analysis capabilities utilising more and more data.’

The NASA Perseverance rover and the China Tianwen-1 are searching for signs of ancient life on the Red Planet – with Hope providing insights into how it lost its atmosphere – as the planet is thought to have once been Earth-like.  

One of the biggest questions is whether life has existed beyond Earth, and Mars is a good place to start investigating, given that evidence points to it once being full of water, warmer and with a thicker atmosphere.

Future missions, including from the European Space Agency and Japan, will bring samples of Martian soil and rock back to the Earth for study.

SpaceX is planning to send an uncrewed mission to Mars using its Starship rocket by 2024 and with a crew by 2026.