The unmanned ‘Hope Probe’ will leave Earth in less than 500 days…

The UAE Space Agency and Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) have announced that plans to send a probe to Mars will go ahead in July 2020. The probe, named ‘Hope’ is 85 per cent complete and undergoing intensive testing to ensure it will be ready in time.

Emirates Mars Mission will be the Arab world’s first interplanetary exploration and aims to report back on details of the Martian atmosphere, including a global picture. Hope will take nine months to reach Mars’ orbit, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the founding of the UAE in 2021.

His Excellency Dr. Ahmad Belhoul Al Falasi, Minister of State for Higher Education and Advanced Skills and Chairman of the UAE Space Agency, said “The Emirates Mars mission’s Hope Probe is almost complete. The UAE is on the verge of making history, after turning its dream of becoming the first Arabic and Islamic country to send a spacecraft to Mars into reality.”

The news comes after MBRSC announced that Hazzaa Al Mansoori will be the first Emirati astronaut for the mission to the International Space Station in September 2019. The eight-day mission to the International Space Station will see Al Mansoori board a Soyuz-MS 15 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on September and return to Earth aboard a Soyuz-MS 12.

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Images: Twitter