Dr Mehmood-ul-Hassan Khan
MOST recently, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has become first country in the GCC, MENA as well as in the whole Muslim world to launch its first mission to Mars, enabling it to develop its scientific and technology capabilities and move away from its reliance on oil. A Japanese H-IIA rocket carried the probe into space. It is hoped that Hope Mars Mission (HMM) will enter into its Martian orbit by February 2021 to coincide with the UAE’s 50th national day celebrations. It is indeed a gigantic effort for further diversification of its national economy. It would be giant step towards massive “digitalization” and “artificial intelligence” in the country. Now “sand” “dunes” of UAE are on the infinite voyage to space & Mars.
For the last so many years, leadership of the UAE has been striving hard to “shackle” the forces of “gravity” to enter in the unlimited space full of “luminous” galaxies of stars. It space program is the best in the region which has enabled it to enter in mysterious world of space and beyond. According to its design details, it has an elliptical orbit ranging from about 20,000 kilometers at its lowest to 43,000 kilometers at its highest point. Hope is the UAE’ first mission to Mars, which aims to use it to transform global science, the nation’s space sector, and its economy too. It is the UAE’s first interplanetary mission. It also aims to provide the global scientific community with novel data. The probe will fly around Mars in a way that’s never been done before.
On successful launch of the HMM, Vice President of UAE and ruler of Dubai H.E. Mohammed bin Rashid highlighted significant role of Arab civilization in the development of science, history and human sciences and hoped to play that main role again. He termed the Hope as the culture of possibilities deeply rooted in the UAE’s approach, philosophy, and journey of accelerating development. The mission was announced in 2014 after its feasibility study in 2013. It took only seven years to become reality. UAE’s space sector is young and small but it has a successful track record. It has been vibrant in Earth observation for about a decade. UAE’s Mars mission has now sent an unmanned spacecraft, or probe, into Martian orbit. Other Mars missions during 2020 have been launched by China and the US Tianwen-1 and Mars 2020, respectively. HMM has now been launched from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Centre for a seven-month journey to red planet, where it will orbit and send back data about atmosphere. The UAE has also launched missions from Kazakhstan, Russia and India.
According to UAE Minister for Advanced Sciences Sarah Amiri it has cost $200 million which goals to provide a complete picture of the Martian atmosphere for the first time, studying daily and seasonal changes. In 2006, the national space agency, supervised by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), started a knowledge transfer program with South Korea. The UAE first announced plans for the mission in 2014 and launched a National Space Program (NSP) in 2017 to develop local expertise. It has an ambitious plan for a Mars settlement by 2117. Hazza al-Mansouri became the first Emirati in space last September when he flew to the International Space Station. To achieve, develop and build the Hope Probe, Emiratis and Dubai’s Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) worked with US educational institutions and universities. According to administrators of HMM around an hour after launch, the probe will deploy solar panels to power its communication and other systems. The MBRSC Space Centre in Dubai will then oversee the spacecraft during its 494 million km journey at an average speed of 121,000 km per hour. That collaboration has produced a clutch of Earth observation satellites, including DubaiSat-1 and DubaiSat-2, launched in 2009 and 2013. They were followed by a nanosatellite called Nayif-1 in 2017. In 2018, the MBRSC launched its first “100% UAE-designed and manufactured” remote-sensing satellite KhalifaSat. The MRBSC also has an astronaut program. Hazzaa Al-Mansoori became the first Emirati in space when he flew to the International Space Station (ISS) on a scientific mission in 2019.
The HMM has three scientific objectives firstly, is to provide the first complete picture of the Martian atmosphere, secondly, to understand the climate dynamics of Mars and the planet’s global weather map by characterizing its lower atmosphere, thirdly, to explain how the weather on Mars affects the escape of hydrogen and oxygen from its atmosphere, fourthly, to understand the structure and variability of hydrogen and oxygen in the upper atmosphere, and identify why Mars is losing those gases into space, fifthly, to offer the global science community new and useful insights about Mars and to further understanding of how and why Mars is uninhabitable for humans why its atmosphere wouldn’t protect us the same way our atmosphere does on Earth.
Being prominent regional expert of UAE & GCC launch of the HMM will definitely expand its science and technology sector which ultimately transform it into more of a knowledge-based economy as the global demand for oil decreases. It has futuristic to plan to establish the first inhabitable human settlement on Mars by 2117 and building of Mars Science City, a collection of laboratories to investigate the planet, as well as meet food and energy challenges. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed termed HMM the nation’s “greatest achievement yet”. The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces labelled it entering into a new chapter. The HMM will travel 495 million km to become the first Arab mission to reach the Red Planet. It is a historic turning point in the UAE’s scientific development and that of the Arab world. UAE has become pioneer of space as well as Mars journey in the GCC, MENA and Muslim world which is indeed a great achievement of vision over vicious circle of tug of wars and dissemination of misinformation. UAE prospers, sustainable and on its way to glory of sciences.
—The writer is Director, Geopolitics/Economics Member Board of Experts, CGSS.
