This Feb. 10, 2021 image taken by the United Arab Emirates' 'Amal,' or 'Hope,' probe and released February 14, 2021, shows Mars (Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center/UAE Space Agency, via AP)
The United Arab Emirates on Sunday published the first image for its Mars probe now circling the Red Planet.
The picture, taken Wednesday, shows sunlight just coming across the surface of Mars. It shows Mars’ north pole, as well as its largest volcano, Olympus Mons.
The image comes from the UAE’s “Amal,” or “Hope,” space probe.
The probe swung into orbit around Mars on Tuesday in a triumph for the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission.
This June 1, 2020, file rendering provided by Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre shows the Hope/Amal mars probe by the United Arab Emirates. (Alexander McNabb/MBRSC via AP, File)
Amal’s arrival puts the UAE in a league of just five space agencies in history that have pulled off a functioning Mars mission. As the country’s first venture beyond Earth’s orbit, the flight is a point of intense pride for the oil-rich nation as it seeks a future in space.
Get The Times of Israel's Daily Editionby email and never miss our top stories
About 60 percent of all Mars missions have ended in failure, crashing, burning up or otherwise falling short, in a testament to the complexity of interplanetary travel and the difficulty of making a descent through Mars’ thin atmosphere.
For months, Amal’s journey has been tracked by the UAE’s state-run media with rapturous enthusiasm. Landmarks across the UAE, including Burj Khalifa, the tallest tower on Earth, have glowed red to mark the spacecraft’s anticipated arrival. Billboards depicting Amal tower over Dubai’s highways. This year is the 50th anniversary of the country’s founding, and Amal is part of the celebrations.
Dubai’s Burj Khalifa is lit up in the shape of a space rocket on February 9, 2021, as the UAE’s ‘Al-Amal’ — Arabic for ‘Hope’ — probe successfully entered Mars’ orbit, making history as the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission. (Giuseppe CACACE / AFP)
If all goes as planned, Amal over the next two months will settle into an exceptionally high, elliptical orbit of 13,670 miles by 27,340 miles (22,000 kilometers by 44,000 kilometers), from which it will survey the mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere around the entire planet, at all times of day and in all seasons.
Advertisement
It joins six spacecraft already operating around Mars: three American, two European and one Indian.
We can't do this work alone.
The war with Iran has been draining for all of us in Israel. But when I heard about a high casualty incident – ballistic missile impacts in Arad and Dimona that left nearly 200 people wounded – I drank a cup of coffee, packed a bag, and headed south.
There, I spoke with Shilgit, the head of an after-school program for underprivileged youth. Standing outside her destroyed center, Shilgit said it was a miracle that no children were hurt and spoke about the community coming together in the hours since.
As a Times of Israel reporter, I’m committed to telling stories of resilience like Shilgit’s. But my colleagues and I can't do this alone. If you value work like this,please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. Your financial support is essential to keep real human reporting like this going.
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
