The UAE (United Arab Emirates) Hope mission has sent its first image of Mars , the spacecraft entered in to an orbit around the Mars previous week making the UAE the first Arab nation in history to have a scientific presence in Mars.
The probe was put in a wide orbit so it could study the planet’s climate and weather systems, which also means it will see the planet’s full disk.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, The Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, tweeted:
“The first picture of Mars captured by the first-ever Arab probe in history, 25,000 km above the Red Planet’s surface.”
The image of the red planet was captured by Hope’s EXI instrument from an altitude of 24,700 km (15,350 miles) above the Mars’s surface at 20:36 GMT on Wednesday.
The three shield volcanoes in a line are Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Arsia Mons. Look east to the limb of the planet.
The Mars mission’s twitter account tweeted
“The transmission of the Hope Probe’s first image of Mars is a defining moment in our history and marks the UAE joining advanced nations involved in space exploration,”
“We hope this mission will lead to new discoveries about Mars which will benefit humanity.”
The Mars Probe Hope is running in an initial ellipse around mars that comes as close as 1,000 km from the planet and goes out to almost 50,000 km.
One of its search is to study the leakage into space of neutral atoms.
