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Hope Probe Embarks On A Two Year Mission
The Emirates Mars Mission has announced that The Hope Probe has completed spacecraft and instrument exercises used to practice science observations and has now begun a two-year science mission.
The two-years science mission that began on 23 May, will yield the first complete picture of Mars’s lower and upper atmospheres throughout a full Martian year.
Omran Sharaf, Project Director of EMM said, “Following a successful cruise to Mars, a near-perfect Mars Orbit Insertion maneuver and our transition from Hope’s capture orbit to our science orbit, we have completed our commissioning, calibration and testing phase. I am delighted to be able to report that the Mars Hope Probe is perfectly positioned to commence its two-year science mission.”
The Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS) instrument has collected nearly 14,000 spectral-spatial images of the atmosphere since the Hope Probe entered the Mars orbit.
Over 500 images of Mars have been taken since the transition to the science orbit in early April by the Hope probe Emirates Exploration Imager (EXI) imager.
The focus is now on mapping water ice clouds in the atmosphere as Mars enters its ‘cloudy season’. A belt of clouds forms near the equator and the Hope Probe will have a unique view of these clouds and will observe the changing dynamics of the atmosphere throughout the daily and seasonal cycles.
The Hope Probe will complete one orbit of the planet every 55 hours and will capture a full planetary data sample every nine days.
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