'Al Amal': the first Arab ship to another planet successfully reaches the orbit of Mars

The oil monarchy of the United Arab Emirates has just become the first Arab country to successfully send a robotic ship to another planet in the solar system.

The probe

Al Amal

-

Esperanza

- has successfully reached the orbit of Mars this afternoon.

The main objective of the Saudi ship is propaganda: to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of this absolutist monarchy with a show of space power.

Incidentally, he wants to serve as an example for the younger generations to pursue technical and scientific careers.

It is also an attempt to clean the image of a country without freedom of expression, with an immigrant population that works in subhuman conditions and where being gay is punishable by jail.

Last summer, King Emeritus Juan Carlos de Borbón settled in this country.

This mission has cost about 200 million dollars and was developed thanks to the collaboration of experts from the USA.The main contribution has been made by the Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder, which has been developing instruments for decades. major exploration missions on Mars and other planets in the solar system.

One of the main missions in which he participated was the

Maven

orbital probe

, with which the Emirates mission bears similarities, although it is less complex.

The probe will be able to obtain high-resolution images of the entire planet and its atmosphere, observe its daily changes, and perhaps answer why Mars became a hostile place for life.

Hope will

study the red planet for at least three years in a very peculiar orbit.

Its maximum distance from the surface will be 40,000 kilometers and the minimum will be 20,000 - almost twice the diameter of the Earth.

The probe will be able to obtain high-resolution images of the entire planet and the layer that surrounds it, observe its daily changes and perhaps answer why Mars lost its atmosphere and became a hostile place for life.

The one and a half ton ship carries a visible and ultraviolet light camera and two spectrometers, one infrared and one ultraviolet, that will be able to study clouds, gases, dust storms and the detailed composition of the three layers of fine envelope of gases that surrounds the planet.

Contrary to what most countries do, the Emirates will publish the data from the probe immediately so that any other country can access it.

Mohamed Bin Rashid, Emir of Dubai and Vice President of the country, announced four years ago plans to establish "the first human settlement" on Mars by 2117

Success or not, the Emirates are already on the map of space powers and their ambitions do not end on the probe.

In addition to sending a spacecraft with an exploration vehicle to the moon in 2024, Sheikh Mohamed Bin Rashid, the emir of Dubai and the country's vice president, announced plans four years ago to establish "the first human settlement" on Mars by 2117. For the moment, its space center already has an astronaut training program in collaboration with NASA and in 2019 it sent the first Emirati, Hazza al Mansoori, to the International Space Station.

Hope's

arrival

is the first chapter in a series of Martian landings that will take place in the coming weeks.

The United States intends to land on the planet the largest, heaviest and most complex exploration vehicle ever built: the

Perseverance

.

Its objective is to search for traces of past life in the Jezero crater, a desert and icy area of ​​the northern hemisphere that 3.5 billion years ago was filled with liquid water.

The arrival is scheduled for the night of February 18 in Spain.

The last to arrive will be the Chinese with their

Tianwen-1

mission

, the most ambitious and complex that the Asian country has launched in its short but intense space exploration career.

The Chinese ship includes an orbital probe, a lander and, finally, a small exploration vehicle capable of analyzing the composition of the surface and also the structure of the subsoil thanks to radar.

Its destination is Utopia Planitia, also in the southern hemisphere.

The arrival of

Tianwen-1

to the orbit of Mars is scheduled for tomorrow.

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