This archive report was first published on 20 July 2020.
On a historic day for the United Arab Emirates, the Al-Amal probe, Arabic for Hope, successfully took off from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center on July 20, 2020, marking the next milestone in the country's ambitious space programme.
The 1,350-kilogramme probe, about the size of an SUV, lifted off at 6:58 am local time (2158 GMT Sunday) after poor weather delayed initial plans. The probe successfully detached from the Japanese launch rocket about an hour after blast-off, with a UAE space official hailing the launch as an 'important milestone for the UAE and the region.'
Unlike the other two Mars ventures scheduled for this year, including Tianwen-1 from China and Mars 2020 from the United States, the UAE's probe will not land on the Red Planet but orbit it for a whole Martian year -- 687 days. The probe will take seven months to travel the 493 million kilometres to Mars, in time to mark the 50th anniversary of the emirates' union in 2021.
Once in orbit, one loop will take 55 hours at an average speed of 121,000 kph, while contact with the UAE command and control centre will be limited to six to eight hours twice a week. The probe is equipped with three instruments that will provide a picture of the Mars atmosphere throughout the Martian year.
"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," Omran Sharaf, the mission's project manager, told AFP.
