The launch of UAE’s Hope Mars mission has been delayed due to poor weather conditions at the launch site in Tanegashima Space Center, Japan. Originally scheduled to blast off on 15 July at 2.21 am IST, the revised launch attempt is now targeting Friday, 17 July at 2.13 am IST. Developed through a partnership between Mohamed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and Arizona State University (ASU).
The Hope mission is a Mars orbiter spacecraft, designed to study the thin atmosphere of Mars and help explain how the planet loses hydrogen and oxygen from its atmosphere into space. The mission is officially named the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) and the orbiter has been named Hope or ‘Al Amal’. If successful, the Hope orbiter will join six others in studying Mars, from the US, Europe and India.
The UAE’s Hope Probe is the Arab nations’ first interplanetary mission.The Hope mission was originally supposed to launch on 15 July at 2.21 am IST (12.51 am local time in the UAE).
However, before the launch, Keiji Suzuki the launch site director for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries said ‘a seasonal rain front was expected to cause intermittent lightning and rain over the next few days’.
“But this thunder is not expected to be severe or lasting, and our assessment is that there will be a chance for a launch,” Suzuki told an online briefing Monday from Tanegashima. “We will make a careful decision based on data.”According to Spaceflight Now, the mission managers decided to postpone the launch before the 53-meter H-IIA rocket was ready to roll out to the launch pad at the space centre, for fueling and final countdown preparations.Heavy rain has continued for more than a week in large areas of Japan, triggering mudslides and floods and killing more than 70 people, most of them on the southern main island of Kyushu.The UAE has a relatively long window to launch the orbiter, that opened up on 14 July and will stay open till 12 August 2020. This window will give them a sufficient buffer in case any other unsuspecting technical difficulties or weather issues arise. However, if they do not launch it within this timeframe, they risk delaying the launch by two years, to 2022.The reason being that one Martian year is equal to almost two years on Earth i.e. Mars takes two Earth years to complete one orbit around the sun. It is only once every two years that the two planets come into perfect alignment with each other around the Sun. This alignment is the ideal time for an Earth-Mars journey since it saves on time, money and fuel. Interplanetary missions are no joke; in any and all conditions, are an expensive, time-consuming affair that requires a lot of planning.