Hope probe will reach Mars in February 2021 and aims to build the first full picture of Mars ... [+] climate throughout the Martian year.

After a few false starts due to bad weather, the Emirates Mars Mission and its Hope probe has successfully launched from Tanegashima Space Center off the coast of Kyushu, Japan. It will spend the next seven months moving towards Mars at an average speed of 121,000 km/h.

Whats Hope all about, and what will it do when it gets to the red planet?

Hope is an orbital spacecraft that will explore the atmosphere of Marsgloballywhile sampling bothdiurnal (daily) andseasonal timescales. Thats never been done by any previous Mars mission. Its scheduled to orbit Mars for at least one entire Martian yearthats 687 days.

Its an almost completely autonomous spacecraft because it will take radio signals 13 to 26 minutes to travel from Hope at Mars to the ground network on Earth. In addition, the Command and Control Center in the Emirates will only contact Hope for 6-8 hours, twice a week. This is, after all, a super low-cost mission.

Hope is scheduled to reach Mars in February 2021 after traveling 495 million miles.

In about a month from now the control center in Dubai in the UAE will adjust Hopes trajectory to push it towards Mars. Then comes Mars orbital insertion, when Hope has to slow down from 121,000 km/h mph to 18,000 km/h. If successfully in that capture orbit, Hope will initially go into an elliptical orbit 500-20,00 km from Mars. Later it will change to a science orbit from 22,000-44,000 km from Mars.

The probe will then complete one orbit of the planet every 55 hours.

The journey of the Emirates Mars Mission Hope Probe.

When the probe begins to collect science data in the third quarter of 2021 it will have two areas of study; the lower and the upper atmospheres of Mars.

The plan is to understand the changes that happen throughout an entire day and night on Mars, across all seasons and across the whole of the planet over an entire yearwhich on Mars last for 687 days (the time it takes for the planet to orbit the Sun). Were focusing on the lower atmosphere of Marsits weather dynamics, dust cycle, carbon dioxide cycle, temperature of the atmosphere and the surface, water cycle, and ice-cloud cycle throughout an entire day-to-night cycle, Sarah Al Amiri, the UAE Minister of State for Advanced Sciences and Deputy Project Manager of the Emirates Mars Mission, told me.

Mars is losing its atmosphere, and Hope will try to find out why. Previous missions have determined that the solar wind strips the atmosphere of some of its constituents, but its also thought that Mars own weather system might play a part in the loss of hydrogen and oxygen. Through simultaneous measurements between the lower and upper atmosphere well be better able to understand if the cloud dynamics, the temperature changes and the dust storms have an impact on the loss of hydrogen and oxygen, said Al Amiri. And if so, how.

Hopes mission is focused on atmospheric dynamics. It will explore the atmosphere of Marsglobally ... [+]while sampling bothdiurnal (daily) andseasonal timescales.

Hopea 1,350 kg mass spacecraft about the size of an SUVwill carry three instruments:

EXI The Emirates eXploration Imager is a digital camera that will capture high resolution images of Mars along with measuring water ice and ozone in the lower atmosphere through the UV bands.

The ASU-built Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer (EMIRS) on the UAE Hope Orbiter will examine ... [+] temperature profiles, ice, water vapor and dust in the atmosphere of Mars.

EMIRS The Emirates Mars InfraRed Spectrometer will measure global distribution of dust, ice cloud, and water vapor in the Martian lower atmosphere. It was built by Arizona State University.

EMUS The Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer will measure oxygen and carbon monoxide in the thermosphere and the variability of hydrogen and oxygen in the upper atmosphere.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

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First Deep Space Mission By An Arab Country Is On Its Way To Mars. This Is What It Will Do - Forbes