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Posted by: jekbradbury May 8 2015, 12:34 AM

In a Wednesday press conference, officials from the United Arab Emirates announced a Mars orbiter mission named Al-Amal (Hope) for the 2020-21 launch opportunity. There's already a strong Twitter presence (official mission handle: https://twitter.com/UAEMarsMission; the science lead has her bilingual account at https://twitter.com/SarahAmiri1). The probe's website is http://www.emiratesmarsmission.ae/ and it lists an imager, a UV spectrometer, and an infrared spectrometer as instruments, while LASP at CU-Boulder http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/blog/2015/05/07/united-arab-emirates-to-partner-with-cu-boulder-on-2021-mars-mission/ the "lead US scientific-academic partner."

More details http://www.thenational.ae/uae/uaes-mars-space-mission-has-a-new-name-hope, http://www.thenational.ae/uae/have-hope-will-travel-uae-mars-team-has-6-years-to-reach-goal, and http://www.thenational.ae/uae/science/emirates-mars-mission---video on the main English-language Emirati news website.

Always good to see more players get in the planetary exploration game, and while Mars is an ambitious first target the UAE appears to have the partners and funding that a new entrant needs.

Posted by: Paolo May 8 2015, 05:51 AM

yep, they seem to be serious. they have partnered with at least the University of Colorado Boulder and the French space agency CNES.
http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/blog/2015/05/07/united-arab-emirates-to-partner-with-cu-boulder-on-2021-mars-mission/
http://www.cnes.fr/web/CNES-en/7134-press-releases.php?item=9812

Posted by: Phil Stooke Jan 31 2017, 03:21 AM

The Emirates Mars Mission is indeed happening. This website:

http://www-mars.lmd.jussieu.fr/granada2017/program_granada2017.htm

is a set of abstracts for a Mars Atmosphere workshop recently held in Spain. Go down to the very bottom of the page, and there are several abstracts about this mission's instruments. It will be an orbiter, in a very unusual high orbit whose low point is at the orbit of Deimos. Among other things it will take multiple images of the planet with resolutions ranging from roughly 2 to 4 km/pixel for weather and dust storm monitoring. I am trying to find out if imaging of Deimos will be possible, but nothing yet.

There are lots of other interesting things here including discussions of MAVEN, Curiosity etc. and Mars 2020.

The Emirates mission, called Hope, has a website here:

http://www.emiratesmarsmission.ae/

Phil

Posted by: bobik Feb 2 2017, 05:23 PM

http://www.unoosa.org/documents/pdf/copuos/stsc/2017/tech-24E.pdf made at the http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/copuos/stsc/2017/index.html.

Posted by: nprev Jul 19 2020, 05:44 PM

The United Arab Emirates' first Mars mission is scheduled to lift off today onboard a Mitsubishi H-2A booster from Tanegashima Space Center at 2158 GMT today. Among other goals, Hope will conduct studies of the martian upper atmosphere similar (and complementary) to those performed by MAVEN.

Watch the launch live https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/07/19/h-2a-emirates-mars-mission-mission-status-center-2/.

GO HOPE!

Posted by: nprev Jul 19 2020, 09:40 PM

Coverage now live. T minus 18 min.

Posted by: Hungry4info Jul 19 2020, 10:15 PM

Launch was successful. We're in a parking orbit until the Mars transfer injection in about 35 minutes.

Posted by: Hungry4info Jul 19 2020, 11:03 PM

Spacecraft separation was successful!

Posted by: nogal Jul 19 2020, 11:14 PM

Hope has called home.

Posted by: nprev Jul 19 2020, 11:22 PM

Looks like both arrays have deployed; apparently there was some sort of concern with one of them.

On to Mars!

Posted by: MahFL Jul 20 2020, 02:31 AM

Awesome. Missed it as I was zzzz.