UAE On Brink Of Launching Arab World’s First Space Mission To Mars

The United Arab Emirates, or UAE, is preparing to send the first Arab unmanned probe to Mars.

The probe – named Al-Amal, or ‘hope’ in Arabic – will launch from Japan's Tanegashima Space Centre on a remote Japanese island on July 15 – and will eventually study the Martian atmosphere, climate and its weather dynamics.

Fueling of the probe, which will be powered by a Japanese rocket, will begin next week.

The probe is slated to return to Earth in February 2021.

The craft was assembled in Colorado and then shipped to Japan, where engineering staff immediately had to enter quarantine due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The UAE sent its first astronaut, Hazza Al Mansouri, into space last year and plans to construct a "Science City" that will mimic conditions on Mars. The UAE has also launched four earth observation satellites. Ultimately, UAE hopes to build a human settlement on Mars by 2117.

The probe will take seven months to fly the 308 million miles to the Red Planet. Then it will remain in orbit around Mars for one entire Martian year, 687 days. The craft will not land on the surface.

"The UAE wanted to send a strong message to the Arab youth and to remind them of the past, that we used to be generators of knowledge," said Omran Sharaf, the mission's project manager. "People of different backgrounds and religion coexisted and shared a similar identity. Put your differences aside, focus on building the region, you have a rich history and you can do much more."

Sarah al-Amiri, the mission's deputy project manager, said the mission has long-range scientific goals.

"It is not a short-lived mission, but rather one that continues throughout the years and produces valuable scientific findings -- be it by researchers in the UAE or globally," she said. "Something we want to better understand, and that's important for planetary dynamics overall, is the reasons for the loss of the atmosphere and if the weather system on Mars actually has an impact on loss of hydrogen and oxygen [the two components of water].”

UAE has also worked with the University of Colorado, Arizona State University and the Space Sciences Laboratory at Berkeley, Calif., on the project.

Amiri also noted: “We are studying a planet that looks as if it was very similar to our own, but has undergone some form of change to the point it can no longer have water, one of the major building blocks of life. For instance, if there is a major dust storm on Mars does that increase the rates of escape of hydrogen and oxygen?”

Sharaf cautioned that if the mission cannot launch in mid-July – due to weather or the covid-19 pandemic – they will have to wait another two years for the next launch.

Sir Ian Blatchford, director of the U.K.'s Science Museum Group, noted that while a lot of Mars missions have focused on geology, this one will “provide the most comprehensive, holistic picture of Mars's climate.”

Monica Grady, professor of planetary and space science at Britain's Open University, said the UAE mission will be a game-changer since it is spearheaded by a country that is not considered a global power.

"It's a real step forwards for Mars exploration, because it shows that other nations --- rather than the European Space Agency and NASA can actually go there --- well we hope it will get there. Mars has a very long history of mission failures," she said.

Over the past 55 years, only six other countries have sent missions to Mars.

“Space travel has by and large been in the group of a small select number of superpowers, so this is a great opportunity for the UAE to go beyond that and to go into something different,” Alistair Burt, Chairman of the Emirates Society.

While some in the Persian Gulf have criticized the Mars mission as a vanity project during a time of plague, recession and falling oil prices, the UAE leaders view the project as part of its diversification away from an oil economy.

Amiri, who also serves the UAE’s Minister of State for Advanced Sciences, explained: “Today the UAE is an economy based on services, logistics, and oil and gas, and within the region it is considered a diversified economy, but if we project that down the line, the importance of knowledge-intensive sectors becomes more and more prominent for the country, as well as creating new knowledge-intensive organizations.”

She added that this mission will hopefully spur the training of more homegrown scientific talent in the Arab world.

“[The] Mars [mission] provided us with the necessary challenge to rigorously develop talent in engineering, it gave us an appetite for risk and being able to circumvent the risk and push forward with the mission for development. It allows us to start integrating and creating new opportunities for scientists within the UAE and those that are studying the natural sciences,” Amiri said.

Sharaf is aware of the high chance of failure.

“Fifty percent of the missions that go to Mars have failed and this is one of the reasons the UAE chose Mars as a target because of the challenges around it and it’s a message that the challenges that we are facing in the region are not easier,” Sharaf said. “The best way to increase the likelihood of succeeding is by testing, testing and again testing, debugging and then fixing, and that’s why the philosophy of the mission is to continue testing till the day that we are going to launch and we won’t stop this.”