{"id":11877,"date":"2021-02-09T00:32:12","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T16:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/uaes-hope-orbiter-on-course-for-arrival-at-mars\/"},"modified":"2021-02-09T00:32:12","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T16:32:12","slug":"uaes-hope-orbiter-on-course-for-arrival-at-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/uaes-hope-orbiter-on-course-for-arrival-at-mars\/","title":{"rendered":"UAE\u2019s Hope orbiter on course for arrival at Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Artist\u2019s illustration of the Hope spacecraft at Mars. Credit: MBRSC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first interplanetary probe from the United Arab Emirates is set to enter orbit around Mars on Tuesday, the first of three robotic missions taking aim on the Red Planet this month.<\/p>\n

The Emirates Mars Mission spacecraft, also known as Hope or Al Amal, is set to begin a 27-minute firing of its six main thrusters around 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT) Tuesday to slow down enough for Martian gravity to capture the probe into orbit.<\/p>\n

If successful, the Hope orbiter will join spacecraft from NASA and the European Space Agency exploring Mars. But it is scheduled to receive company within days, with the scheduled arrival of China\u2019s Tianwen 1 orbiter and rover Wednesday, and the landing of NASA\u2019s nuclear-powered Perseverance rover Feb. 18.<\/p>\n

The Hope, Tianwen 1, and Perseverance missions launched last July, rocketing into the solar system from spaceports in Japan, China, and Cape Canaveral. The trio of missions, all developed independently of one another, took advantage of a once-every-26-months alignment of Earth and Mars to permit the direct trip to the Red Planet.<\/p>\n

The roughly $200 million Emirates Mars Mission is the Arab world\u2019s first interplanetary probe. Engineers and scientists from the UAE partnered with U.S. researchers to develop the spacecraft and its three scientific instruments, all aimed at bringing into focus the structure and dynamics of the Martian atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnything that you want to attempt to do in space is hard,\u201d said Pete Withnell, program manager for the Emirates Mars Mission at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. \u201cAnd something as sporty as getting a spacecraft into orbit around another planet is even harder.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany people may know the statistics,\u201d Withnell said in a virtual press briefing in late January. \u201cLess than half of those spacecraft that have been sent to Mars have actually made it successfully. So there are some statistics that are very sobering, but \u2026 this is a highly practiced, highly simulated, highly analyzed event on EMM. I cannot imagine being better prepared than we are right now. We are very fortunate to have a very healthy spacecraft, and everything is looking very good at the moment, so I\u2019m optimistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Emirates Mars Mission launched July 19 from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan, riding a Japanese H-2A rocket procured by the UAE government from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The H-2A hurled the 3,000-pound (1,350-kilogram) Hope spacecraft on a high-speed trajectory escaping the bonds of Earth\u2019s gravity.<\/p>\n

After deploying its solar panels and completing a post-launch checkout, the spacecraft fired its thrusters several times to adjust its course toward Mars, setting the stage for the critical Mars Orbit Insertion, or MOI, maneuver Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, the team has prepared as well as they can possibly prepare to reach orbit around Mars,\u201d said Sarah al-Amiri, the Mars mission\u2019s lead scientist and the UAE\u2019s minister of state for advanced sciences.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s useful to first consider the fact that the Al Amal spacecraft is moving at exactly the right velocity to get it from Earth to Mars,\u201d Withnell said. \u201cOnce it arrives at Mars, it\u2019s moving too fast to get into the relatively small gravitational field of that planet. So the spacecraft has to slow itself down. If we do nothing, then the spacecraft will simply stay in an orbit about the sun, much like an asteroid.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mars Orbit Insertion burn will cap a 307 million-mile (494 million-kilometer) interplanetary journey. At the current distance of Mars, it will take radio signals about 11 minutes to travel from the Hope spacecraft back to ground teams gathered at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what the spacecraft principally needs to do is slow itself down,\u201d Withnell said. \u201cSo a very short time prior to MOI, roughly an hour, the spacecraft will rotate. It has spent the vast majority of its time in the last seven months either pointing its solar arrays at the sun, or its antennas toward Earth\u2026 But neither of those orientations work for MOI.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we need to reorient the spacecraft so that the thrusters are pointed in the right direction, and they then burn for 27 minutes, and take out roughly 1,000 meters per second (2,236 mph) of velocity relative to Mars,\u201d Withnell said. \u201cAnd then we\u2019re captured into into what is called a capture orbit about the planet. So fundamentally that\u2019s what Mars Orbit Insertion is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The UAE\u2019s Hope mission is on the home stretch of a 307 million-mile (494 million-kilometer) journey to Mars. Credit: MBRSC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Mars Orbit Insertion Burn is a pivotal moment in the life of the Emirates Mars Mission, which the UAE government first announced in July 2014. Along with the launch, the MOI maneuver is one of the two riskiest parts of the mission, according to David Brain, deputy science lead on the mission from LASP.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, there\u2019s some worry there, but overall I feel confident. I feel like the team has practiced, the spacecraft has been tested. There\u2019s a chance that it might not go well, and we\u2019ll deal with that when it happens,\u201d Brain said. \u201cMostly, I\u2019m feeling some anticipation, and like there is about to be a firehose of data headed my way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Navigators on Earth say the Hope spacecraft is right on target for the insertion burn. Hitting the aimpoint after the more than 200-day trip from Earth is comparable to an archer hitting 2-millimeter target from a kilometer away, Withnell said.<\/p>\n

Ground controllers back on Earth will be in \u201cobserving mode\u201d during the one-shot Mars arrival maneuver, according to Withnell.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have no opportunity to have any meaningful real time impact on what\u2019s happening,\u201d Withnell said. \u201cSo a lot of the engineering emphasis has been on making the MOI event completely autonomous, which of course means that the spacecraft needs to have some level of smarts on-board to take care of maybe some events that are not completely expected. So to some degree, the spacecraft can take care of itself. If a thruster fails and whatnot, then the spacecraft actually knows how to react to that. So during the event, we are observers, and we get to see what\u2019s happening. But we do not interact in real time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Engineers will be watching telemetry streams from the spacecraft to confirm it is pointing in the right direction, and then verify that the burn started on time. Ground teams will monitor the Doppler shift in the radio signals from the spacecraft to measure how much it has slowed down relative to Mars, and the Hope probe itself will be calculating its trajectory autonomously.<\/p>\n

Assuming the burn goes according to plan, the Hope spacecraft will swing into a preliminary capture orbit ranging between 600 miles and 30,700 miles (1,000-by-49,380 kilometers) from Mars. The science instruments will collect their first data at the Red Planet in the coming weeks, setting the stage for Hope to steer into an operational science orbit by mid-May that ranges between approximately 12,400 miles (20,000 kilometers) and 26,700 miles (43,000 kilometers) above Mars.<\/p>\n

During parts of each 55-hour semi-synchronous orbit, the spacecraft\u2019s move at roughly the same speed around Mars as the planet\u2019s rotation. That will give the orbiter\u2019s science instruments sustained views of the same region of Mars in much the same way weather satellites in geostationary orbit provide uninterrupted views of the same part of Earth.<\/p>\n

In addition to the LASP facility in Colorado \u2014 where the spacecraft was built \u2014 and Dubai\u2019s Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center \u2014 where the probe will be operated \u2014 scientists from Arizona State University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Northern Arizona University contributed to the Hope mission.<\/p>\n

The UAE\u2019s government set the nation on a course for a Mars mission by outlining several objectives, including inspiration for Arab youth, revitalizing the UAE\u2019s high-tech sector, introducing a culture for research and development, and aligning the mission\u2019s arrival at Mars with the 50th anniversary of the country\u2019s independence in 1971.<\/p>\n

The Hope mission has already largely met those objectives, al-Amiri said.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft was built for a fraction of the cost of NASA\u2019s recent Mars orbiters, and still has the instrumentation necessary to investigate key unanswered questions about the Martian climate.<\/p>\n

And the mission has gone a long way toward inspiring Arab youth, according to al-Amiri.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin a circle of people within the Arab region that I\u2019m with, a lot of them are people that I\u2019ve had discussions with even prior to the launch of this mission, and they were highly speculative with whether or not we will be able to achieve this objective,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd for them it\u2019s been a reality check on what is possible from this region, and a reality check on how we can go about creating more and more positive change from the region. And I think a lot of the youth, especially over the course of at least the last six to seven years, have been really frustrated with instability and are looking for the creation of stability.<\/p>\n

\u201cMars has been visible in the sky,\u201d al-Amiri said. \u201cAlmost every child that I come into daily contact with \u2026 they\u2019ll be able to point out Mars in the sky. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever lived through a time where that was normal conversation in family settings.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than 450 people worked on the Emirates Mars Mission, according to UAE officials. About 200 members of the team have come from the UAE, and about 150 people from LASP in Colorado have worked on the project. Of the 200 Emiratis assigned to the mission, more than a third have been women.<\/p>\n

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This infographic illustrates the Hope mission\u2019s journey to Mars. Credit: MBRSC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Brain said the instruments aboard the Hope spacecraft are similar to sensors flown on past space missions, but the UAE\u2019s probe will go into a unique orbit that lingers higher above Mars.<\/p>\n

The Emirates Mars Mission will put the instruments \u201cinto this new orbit that opens up all new science for us to investigate the Martian atmosphere,\u201d Brain said. \u201cSo there are three aspects of the science orbit that are important. No. 1, it\u2019s a very high altitude orbit, much higher than most other Mars science missions. That high-altitude orbit lets our instruments observe Mars from the global perspective. We\u2019ll always be seeing roughly half of Mars, no matter where we are in the orbit when we look at the planet.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo. 2, the orbit is fairly close to parallel with the Mars equator, and by this, I mean something like how the moon orbits Earth,\u201d Brain said. \u201cEMM will have a moon-like orbit around the planet unlike many other Mars spacecraft, which orbits over the top of the North Pole, and then over the bottom of the South Pole. They have highly inclined orbits that are very polar. Those kinds of orbits are great for science, but they force the spacecraft to always observe at the same time of day, 2 a.m., 2 p.m. 2 a.m., 2 p.m. When you lay that orbit on its side like the moon orbits the Earth, suddenly every time you go around the planet, you visit at every time of day. You get above midnight, you get above noon, you get above 3 p.m. You\u2019ve seen all the times of day, which is great for our science.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last part of the orbit that\u2019s important here is that it still is elliptical. Sometimes the spacecraft is close to Mars, sometimes far from Mars,\u201d Brain said. \u201cSo when it\u2019s far from Mars, it\u2019s moving slowly, it\u2019s above one time of day, while Mars spins underneath. So it can observe many geographic regions at a single time of day. When the whole probe gets close to Mars it speeds up, and it can match the speed at which Mars is spinning on its axis. It can hover above a single geographic region like the big volcano Olympus Mons and study the atmosphere there at many times of day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of the science goals of the Emirates Mars Mission build on discoveries made by NASA\u2019s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, which arrived at the Red Planet in 2014. Scientists have analyzed data from the MAVEN mission to confirm that the bombardment of the solar wind and radiation stripped away the Martian atmosphere, transforming the planet from a warmer, wetter world into the barren planet of today.<\/p>\n

The Hope probe will track oxygen and hydrogen escaping from the Martian atmosphere into space, and will peer deeper into the planet\u2019s atmosphere than MAVEN. Scientists want to investigate possible links between Martian weather and climate with the escape of atmospheric particles.<\/p>\n

A color camera on the mission was developed by LASP at the University of Colorado at Boulder and MBRSC. Infrared and ultraviolet spectrometers were produced by LASP, Arizona State University and the University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with Emirati scientists.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall, the science goal of EMM is to get a global understanding of sort of how the atmosphere works together, transport in the atmosphere, how weather above Olympus Mons influences weather completely on the other side of the planet, or at a different time,\u201d Brain said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first science objective is to understand the lower atmosphere of Mars in a global sense, and how the lower atmosphere of Mars varies geographically with time of day, and over the Martian seasons,\u201d Brain said.<\/p>\n

The Hope mission will also probe the outermost layers of the Martian atmosphere, where hydrogen and oxygen are escaping into space.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve learned from past missions that the loss of the atmosphere over time, over Martian history, we think, is important. But we need to do more to quantify that loss to understand how the rest of the atmosphere influences that loss to space,\u201d Brain said.<\/p>\n

The Hope spacecraft\u2019s other primary science goal is to study the link between weather in the lower atmosphere and the conditions at the top of the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s a dust storm in the lower atmosphere, does atmospheric escape increase, and how?\u201d Brain said. \u201cIf there is some change in the lower atmosphere, or a bunch of cloud formations, how does the upper atmosphere respond? In the past we\u2019ve had missions that study the upper atmosphere, we\u2019ve had missions to study the lower atmosphere, usually at just a single time of day, but we haven\u2019t had a lot of observations that help us how understand how the atmosphere works from bottom to top, so EMM will provide that information.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to get complete coverage of the Martian atmosphere every nine Martian days, and by complete coverage, I mean we will have observed every geographic region at every time of day every nine days,\u201d Brain said.<\/p>\n

But first, the Hope spacecraft has to get itself into position to make those observations. That hinges on the Mars Orbit Insertion maneuver Tuesday.<\/p>\n

What if something goes wrong?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe continue on,\u201d al-Amiri said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a a one-off program. It is not something that you quit. We\u2019ve had a taste of planetary exploration, and I think we will continue delving in for more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artist\u2019s illustration of the Hope spacecraft at Mars. Credit: MBRSC The first interplanetary probe from the United Arab Emirates is set to enter orbit around Mars on Tuesday, the first of three robotic missions taking aim on the Red Planet this month. The Emirates Mars Mission spacecraft, also known as Hope or Al Amal, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1638,1640,1641,1642,367,1636,1643,1561],"class_list":["post-11877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-al-amal","tag-emirates-mars-mission","tag-hope","tag-lasp","tag-mars","tag-mohammed-bin-rashid-space-center","tag-northern-arizona-university","tag-planetary-science"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11877"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}