AMNA AL KATBI (DUBAI)
The Emirates Mars Mission's (EMM) Hope Probe has completed 1,254 days since its launch towards the Red Planet. The probe orbits in an elliptical path between 20,000km and 43,000km, with an inclination of 25 degrees towards Mars. It completes one orbit around the planet every 55 hours, recording a comprehensive set of data for Mars every nine days as part of its mission to map the Martian atmosphere.
The EMM has published 18 scientific papers and research papers on the probe's data in international scientific journals since its entry into orbit. This underscores the importance of this information for researchers and scientists worldwide.
The EMM provides the eighth batch of scientific data on the Martian atmosphere, highlighting significant developments that enhance understanding of the weather on the Red Planet. The latest data adds valuable insights to crucial datasets released earlier about the transition between Mars seasons. This coverage includes the end of the dust storm season on the planet, coinciding with the arrival of a new year during the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere.
The rich images and data collected through the Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer (EMIRS), Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS), and the Emirates eXploration Imager (EXI) provide valuable views for scientists to understand various weather factors on Mars and their impact on its climate and environment.
For the first time, this batch includes Level 3 halo products from the EMUS, containing information about the distribution of hydrogen and oxygen particles surrounding Mars and escaping into space.
The data from the Hope Probe amounts to about 2.9 terabytes on the Martian atmosphere, processed through the EMM Science Data Centre.
The probe has achieved historical milestones, capturing unprecedented observations of Mars' smaller moon, Deimos, using the probe's three scientific instruments as it passed the moon's closest point at a distance of approximately 100 kilometres, the closest encounter by a spacecraft since the Viking mission in 1977.
The EMM also provides daily and seasonal maps of Mars' ice using the EMIRS, as published in a scientific paper through the Journal of Geophysical Research. The Hope Probe has successfully observed daily and seasonal changes in the ice in the Tharsis region on the Red Planet, including the presence of carbon dioxide ice at low elevations during the night and the polar ice cap of water and carbon dioxide.