UAE unveils details of UAE Mars mission

Dubai:  The UAE unveiled its Mars mission plans on Wednesday. The UAE Mars Mission will provide the truly global picture of the Martian atmosphere through an unmanned probe to be launched in July 2020 to reach Mars in 2021, according to the engineers involved in the project. "Our science mission is to produce the first ever truly global picture of the Martian atmosphere. This is the first holistic study of the Martian climate and how the layers of atmosphere fit together," Omran Sharaf, Emirates Mars Mission Project Manager, said in the video of the Emirates Mars Mission launched during the unveiling of the UAE Mars mission on Wednesday. These initial details were unveiled at an official event attended by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. The event is attended by top-level UAE officials. A purely Emirati team composed of 150 engineers and scientists will work on the mission. "We have to be ready to launch by then [July 2020]. There is no second chance. It's a race against time," Sharaf said. The spacecraft will be launched in the nose cone of a rocket. The journey to Mars will take around seven months. The Mars mission aims to analyse the Martian climate in order for the scientists to better understand the Red Planet, the Earth in the future millions of years from now, and other planets that have yet to be discovered.  "We will model the connections between all the different components of the Martian climate including all the temperatures, winds, dust, and clouds," said Sarah Amiri, Deputy Project Manager, Science Lead.   Gulf News