By Daniel Strain

Principals
Pete Withnell of LASP; Omran Sharaf, Project Director, Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre

Funding
United Arab Emirates Space Agency

Collaboration + support
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at 񱦵; Arizona State University; Space Sciences Lab at University of California, Berkeley

Engineers at 񱦵’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) perform inspections of the Hope Probe spacecraft.How years of international collaboration led to Hope circling Mars

The Emirates Mars Mission (EMM), thefirst led by an Arab nation, releasedits first detailed image of the planeton Feb. 14, 2021. The photo, takenby the mission’s Hope probe (Al Amalin Arabic), showed Mars at dawn assunlight moved across the surface—just revealing the edges of OlympusMons, the tallest volcano in thesolar system.

The mission is led by the MohammedBin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) inthe United Arab Emirates, alongsideknowledge partners and expertsfrom around the world. They includethe at 񱦵,Arizona State University, the Universityof California, Berkeley and Japan’sMitsubishi Heavy Industries.

For Noora Alsaeed, a scholar atMBRSC and a PhD student at LASP,Hope’s first glimpse of Mars broughtthe promise of more things to come.She wasn’t directly involved in theplanning for the mission but hopes touse EMM data in her research.

“It was the best Valentine’s Day giftever,” Alsaeed said. “The photocaptured everything that EMM isgoing to study. You could see thedust lifting off the surface. You couldsee the clouds around the North andSouth poles.”

It was also a gift that was possibleonly because of internationalcollaboration.

Beginning in 2015, Alsaeed, who grewup in Dubai, joined dozens of otheryoung researchers and engineersfrom the MBRSC who traveled tothe foot of the Rocky Mountains inBoulder. Over five years, many ofthem developed, built and tested theHope probe, and laid out its scientificgoals working in collaboration withengineers and scientists at LASP.

In the process, these researcherslearned the ins and outs of planetaryscience and aerospace engineering—from how carbon dioxide falls as snowover the Martian poles to how todesign a propellant tank that can carryenough fuel to put a spacecraft intoorbit around Mars.

The international effort has been arousing success. Hope entered intoorbit around Mars on Feb. 9 and iscollecting data on Martian weatherfrom all points on the planet at alltimes of day and seasons of the year.“This sort of mission is like aprimordial soup for innovation, whereyou have all these diverse mindsworking together,” Alsaeed said.

Mohsen Mohammed Al Awadhi,EMM’s systems engineer, agreed.When he graduated from college inthe UAE in 2010, there were few jobsfor young Emiratis who wanted totravel beyond Earth’s atmosphere.So in 2015, he jumped at the chanceto move to Colorado and eventuallyearn his master’s degree in aerospaceengineering at 񱦵—part ofthe UAE’s efforts to build a sustainablespace program that would inspireArab youth and engage with theworldwide space science community.

“We’re not just doing this to say we’redoing this,” Al Awadhi said. “We wantto lead a mission that is unique andthat is actually contributing to thescientific community.”

David Brain, a professor at LASP whostudies Mars, saw that dedicationwhen he visited the UAE in the leadupto the mission. At one point, thescientist spoke to a class of middleschool girls about their nation’svoyage to Mars.

“I couldn’t get out of the room, theywere so excited,” he said. “Thatengagement was astounding. Iremember my own middle schoolexperience of how uncool it was toshow interest in things like that.”

That may be the true legacy of EMM,Alsaeed added—now, young peoplein the Arab world don’t have to travelthousands of miles from home to visitthe stars.

“They already have the passion,” shesaid. “Now they feel like they can acton it.”

Engineers at 񱦵’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) perform inspections of the Hope Probe spacecraft before its shipment to Dubai and the Tanegashima launch site in Japan.

The Hope Probe underwent acoustictesting at 񱦵’s Laboratoryfor Atmospheric and Space Physics(LASP) in 2019. Hope is now studyinghow daily and seasonal changes inthe Martian atmosphere affect the rateat which gases can escape from it.

Photos by Emirates Mars Mission