Five Things to Know About UAE’s First Mission to Mars – Gizmodo Australia

The Emirates Hope Mission, scheduled to launch this Friday, is the first Arab attempt to reach the Red Planet. Heres how the UAE will endeavour to make history.
The Hope spacecraft, or Al Amal, was supposed to launch today from the Tanegashima Space Centre in Japan, but bad weather has bumped the launch to Friday, July 17. The 3,000-pound (1,350-kilogram) spacecraft essentially a Martian weather satellite will be delivered to space and nudged toward Mars atop a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-2A rocket. Come Friday, youll be able to watch the action here.
Hope, which will enter into orbit around Mars in February 2021, will be used to study the planets atmosphere and weather. Assuming all goes well, this will mark the first Arab mission to Mars, or any other planet for that matter.
The UAE Space Agency and the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre, in collaboration with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, have announced that the new launch date for the# HopeProbe to Mars the first Arab interplanetary mission- will be on Friday 17th July, 2020. #HopeMarsMissionpic.twitter.com/2pI0kFrrv4
Hope Mars Mission (@HopeMarsMission) July 14, 2020
The Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) is one of three scheduled missions to the Red Planet during the now-open launch window, the others being NASAs Perseverance rover, launching in two weeks, and Chinas Tianwen-1 lander. (The European and Russian ExoMars mission had to be postponed due to technical delays and the covid-19 pandemic.) This launch window happens once every 26 months, offering the most direct route from Earth to the Red Planet.
Here are five things to know about this historic mission.
Made in the UAE but With a Little Help From Friends
In the works since 2013, the Hope project was planned, managed, and implemented by an Emirati team, with oversight and funding coming from the UAE Space Agency, according to Arab News.
It cost the UAE some $US200 ($287) million to build, which includes launch expenses contracted out to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Thats a fairly modest price tag considering the $US670 ($962) million it cost NASA to build the MAVEN spacecraft, a comparable mission launched to Mars in 2013. Still, nothing compares to Indias Mars Orbiter Mission, with its remarkably low price tag of $US74 ($106) million.
The UAE had never embarked on a project like this before, so it smartly sought out expertise from U.S. institutions, including the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder, which had previously worked on the MAVEN mission. As BBC reports, Emirati and U.S. engineers collaborated on the design and manufacturing of the spacecraft.
Its one thing to tell somebody how to ride a bike but until youve done it, you dont really understand what its like. Well, its the same with a spacecraft, Brett Landin, a senior systems engineer at LASP, told the BBC. I could give you the process for fuelling a spacecraft, but until youve put on an escape suit and transferred 800 kg

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