Just one day after arriving in orbit around Mars, the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) first interplanetary spacecraft, Hope, took a beautiful photo of the Red Planet.
The new photo, which is the first since Hope’s arrival in Mars orbit on February 9 shows a few clouds, four massive Marsbergs and the expansive Valles Marineris – the largest gorge in the solar system – to the right of the statue.
“We could not have asked for a better day on Mars!” UAE Space Agency President Sarah Al Amiri wrote in a tweet on Sunday (February 14). “Can’t wait to see the scientific data come in so we can fully characterize the lower atmosphere!”
Related: The UAE’s Hope Mars mission pictured
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The Hope spacecraft launched in July 2020 is to study the weather and atmosphere of the Red Planet. Hope performed a dangerous 27-minute propeller burn on February 9 to slip into orbit around Mars the UAE the fifth entity to visit the Red Planet. (China became sixth the next day with its Tianwen-1 mission.)
On board are three different instruments, one of which is a camera called the Emirates Exploration Imager (EXI). The EXI snapped the new photo on February 10 at 15:36 EST (2036 GMT). At the time, the spacecraft was about 24,700 kilometers above the planet’s surface.
The easiest to see in the new image is the trio of mountains marching over the image: from top to bottom, Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons and Arsia Mons. The crazy ones to choose from are the massive Olympus Mons, the largest mountain in the solar system, seen at sunrise right along the line where night and day meet. To the right of the peak line is the expansive canyon system Valles Marineris.
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Throughout the image is exactly what Hope went to study on Mars: the atmosphere of the Red Planet. EXI and the other two instruments, which measure infrared and ultraviolet light, will collect and compile the data scientists need to understand the planet’s weather around the world and throughout the day, how the layers of the atmosphere interact with each other.
“Look at all the clouds,” said Andrew Jones, an instrument scientist for EXI at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Spatial Physics, who was on a mission with the UAE. said in a statement. “We expected amazing things from EXI, but saw my breath when I saw the clouds above the limb and in the craters and valleys.”
Hope will stay in an initial orbit for about two months before moving on to his final orbit and starting the scientific observations later in the spring.
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