
In a first, UAE spacecraft blasts off to Mars from Japan - aaron695
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/in-a-first-uae-spacecraft-blasts-off-to-mars-from-japan-20200720-p55djq.html
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ciarannolan
Here's some more info [1]:

>The scientific objectives for the Hope Mars Mission, as agreed upon by the
global Mars science community, are aimed at providing a complete picture of
the Martian atmosphere. The probe will study the climate daily and through
seasonal cycles, the weather events in the lower atmosphere such as dust
storms, as well as the weather at different geographic areas of Mars.
According to the Hope Mars Mission team, the probe will be the "first true
weather satellite" at Mars.[25]

>The Hope probe will also study the atmospheric layers of Mars in detail and
will provide data to study: the reason for a drastic climatic change in the
Martian atmosphere from the time it could sustain liquid water to today, when
the atmosphere is so thin that water can only exist as ice or vapour, to help
understand how and why Mars is losing its hydrogen and oxygen into space, and
the connection between the upper and lower levels of the Martian
atmosphere.[25] Data from the Hope probe will also help to model the Earth's
atmosphere and study its evolution over millions of years.[20] All data gained
from the mission will be made available to 200 universities and research
institutes across the globe for the purpose of knowledge sharing.[20]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirates_Mars_Mission#Hope_spa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirates_Mars_Mission#Hope_spacecraft)

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austincheney
I saw somewhere that the UAE space program is more than 70% under the age of
35, which is interesting. Where I saw that, I don’t remember the source, it
also looked like the space program is opening a cultural dynamic among school
age children in the UAE to encourage increased interests in math and science
for hope of joining the program.

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johnwalkr
The project manager for HOPE is 36 and has a few missions of experience as an
engineer. They have domestic facilities and capabilities now, but their first
partner for Building satellites and knowledge transfer was A Korean aerospace
startup. So virtually nobody there was trained in a traditional large space
agency ecosystem although of course now they have many good working
relationships with them. Definitely an agency to watch!

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rgovostes
This article is 5 sentences long. Here's a better one:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/science/emirates-mars-
mis...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/science/emirates-mars-mission.html)

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nazgulsenpai
That one is 0 sentences long because of paywall.

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djohnston
Just tbc, when they say monitor climate change, they mean seasonality right?

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qayxc
They mean the historic climate change that caused Mars to lose all its water.

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cheez
First ever, and go to Mars? Pretty ballsy.

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runawaybottle
A Reuters report on this mentioned there are two other Mars missions being
launched this year from China and the US, so it looks like it’s the place to
be.

Will be interesting to see how the data can be used as a whole from the three
missions.

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nyokodo
The lowest energy means to get to Mars is to use the Hohmann Transfer Orbit
and the launch window comes about approximately every 2.1 years. Therefore,
you’ll tend to see missions from different agencies all launch close together.
More complex missions using gravity assists or relying on certain alignments
etc are more variable in timing.

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boomahora
Fight Island wasn't enough, next up is Fight Planet.

