It was 2014, and the United Arab Emirates announced that it would be launching a mission to Mars by December 2021, the country’s 50th birthday (the United Arab Emirates was founded on December 2, 1971). They had several challenges to overcome before achieving that dream, however, as the country had no space agency or planetary scientists, and it only just launched its first satellite at that time. With only less than a decade as its time limit, and with odds stacked against it like that, one would wonder whether the country could really accomplish their goal.
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The rapidly assembled team of engineers, with an average age of 27, frequently heard the same jibe. “You guys are a bunch of kids. How are you going to reach Mars?” says Sarah Al Amiri, originally a computer engineer and the science lead for the project.
But they prevailed.
Six years on, Al Amiri beamed as she admired the country’s fully assembled Mars orbiter while it underwent tests in February. In the bright, clean room at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) in Dubai, engineers were testing the car-sized orbiter before shipping it to the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. It will launch sometime during a three-week window starting on 15 July.
The Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) will be the first interplanetary venture of any Arab nation, but it’s not just a technology demonstrator. Once it arrives at the red planet in February 2021, the orbiter, known as Hope (or Amal in Arabic), will produce the first global map of the Martian atmosphere. And, somewhat unusually for a space mission, the EMM will release its data to the international scientific community without an embargo.
But the battle’s not over yet, as going to space is not the UAE’s main concern, but rather, its economy. But for spectators, the UAE’s future is bright.
More about this over at Scientific American.
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(Image Credit: Natalie Naccache for Nature/ Scientific American)
Source: neatorama