What’s On has details and videos of the UAE Mars mission that’s sending and unmanned probe called Hope, to Mars by 2021.

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Not content with having some of the tallest buildings in the world, the UAE has firmly set its sights on something further. Sixty million kilometres further, to be exact.

It plans to send an unmanned probe to Mars – the Arab world’s first ever mission to another planet.

The country announced their plans to mount a Mars mission in July last year; since then, mission controllers have been putting together their plan to launch a probe to Mars.

Named Al Amal (or Hope) the probe will be designed to study the red planet’s atmosphere, and then share their data with about 200 universities and organisations around the world.

Mars Mission

The UAE’s young space programme is a homegrown operation. The space agency — called the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre — has developed its own technology for the mission revealing big ambitions to put ‘Hope’ in orbit around Mars by 2021 just in time for the UAE’s 50th anniversary of independence.

Hope will launch in 2020 and take nine months to journey to the red planet in a mission described by many as a huge technological leap for the UAE, adding it to the small club of countries that have effectively achieved interplanetary exploration.

Speaking to The National newspaper Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum said: “This Mission to Mars is a really about sending hope to the Arab world – sending them a message to say you can be better; you can improve your country; you can reach where you want”.

If the programme achieves its goals, the mission would place the UAE among a short list of entities with successful Mars probes, alongside the United States, Russia, the European Space Agency and India.