Ahead of the historic arrival of the UAE’s Hope Probe to Mars’ orbit tonight, HH Sheikh Mohammed, Ruler of Dubai, posted a video on his Twitter account with a message to the UAE people and the world, stressing the historic nature of the journey.
“This is the most distant point in the universe that Arabs have reached throughout their history. More than five million hours of work for more than 200 Emirati engineers. Our goal is to give hope to all Arabs, that we are able to compete with the rest of nations and peoples. We ask God for success in arrival to Mars,” wrote His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.
Sheikh Mohammed stressed the risk involved with the mission that has historically had a 50 per cent chance of success.
“In the coming hours, the Hope Probe will reach Mars, and the biggest challenge will be to enter the orbit of Mars. 50 per cent of the human missions that tried before us could not enter the orbit. But I say, even if we did not enter the orbit, we have entered history.”
رسالتي لشعب الإمارات … pic.twitter.com/xtU6Pot4lx
— HH Sheikh Mohammed (@HHShkMohd) February 8, 2021
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said recently that the probe could help answer one of the great questions: is there life on mars?
The Hope Probe was initially launched as part of the Emirates Mars Mission on July 20, 2020 from Tanegashima, Japan, in conjunction with the Dubai-based space mission’s control team operating out of the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre. The spacecraft has since travelled on a seven-month, 493,500,000-kilometre journey to reach Mars orbit.
As Sheikh Mohammed mentioned last week, this makes the United Arab Emirates the fifth player to reach Mars, after the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the European Space Agency and India.
The MOI, which is scheduled to occur tonight, is the most critical part of the mission, in which the stresses on the spacecraft of all engines firing at once are far beyond those at launch. The complex maneuver will be completed with a 22-minute two-way radio delay from Earth. This requires the spacecraft to be highly autonomous.
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