The UAE’s Hope mission is set for liftoff this week from Japan, taking aim on Mars with a package of scientific instruments designed to probe weather and climate change on the Red Planet.
A Mars orbiter developed by the United Arab Emirates in partnership with U.S. scientists has been mounted on top of a Japanese H-2A rocket and its battery charged for liftoff Tuesday from the Tanegashima Space Center.
The Arab world’s first Mars probe has arrived at its launch site in Japan after officials navigated coronavirus-related quarantine protocols and travel restrictions to ensure the spacecraft can launch on time in July.
Ground controllers have beamed the final commands to NASA’s Kepler telescope, turning off the spacecraft’s transmitters and disabling the craft’s automatic recovery software after the planet-hunting observatory ran out of fuel last month.
Scientists from the United Arab Emirates have announced the Arab world’s first Mars probe will launch in July 2020 and collect global measurements of the Martian atmosphere.