Dubai: Yamama Badwan
The Emirates Mars Exploration Project, the “Probe of Hope”, is preparing to move to a new orbit that allows unprecedented observation of the moon “Deimos”, the smallest of the two moons of Mars, with a series of flights close to its orbit, about 150 km, coinciding with its celebration of its second year around the red planet.
This came in a press conference organized by the Emirates Space Agency, yesterday, at the Museum of the Future in Dubai, in which each of: Eng. Project science team leader.
This step witnesses the transition of the “Hope Probe” to a new elliptical orbit around Mars, by relying on a change in speed, or the so-called “delta V”, with the aim of completing the “Lambert” maneuver and changing its orbit, which contributes to facilitating observations of the “Deimos” moon. In addition to continuing his mission to collect data about the atmosphere of the red planet.
Quality addition
Mohsen Al-Awadi explained that with the completion of the basic mission of the Hope Probe, and after making sure that its scientific equipment is still working efficiently and with high quality, its mission has been extended for two Earth years, a “Martian year”, and any image that the probe will take of the “Deimos” moon will be new to the world, in In light of the lack of information and images of it, the project team will make minor changes in the orbit of the probe, which qualifies it to capture this data, which will constitute a qualitative addition to the scientific community.
He said that because of the distinctive scientific orbit of the Hope Probe, we were fortunate enough to be near “Deimos”, which allows us to provide data that will be new to scientists worldwide, with the probe’s main mission, which was planned to be two Earth years, not affected, but after ensuring the efficiency of the probe. With his scientific equipment, the mission has become open in time, with the possibility of extending it again after the completion of the next two earthly years.
scientific goals
In turn, Zakaria Al Shamsi explained that the scientific goals of exploring “Deimos” include the shape of the moon, its atmosphere and much more, pointing to the importance of cooperation with international scientific bodies in the matter of exploring Mars, as the most prominent of them is underway with the “MAVEN” probe of the US Space Agency. NASA.”
High accuracy
Hessa Al-Matroushi said that the campaign to photograph the moon “Deimos” constitutes an important step, aiming to provide the international community with many observations and unprecedented scientific information about it, as the Hope probe collects a set of high-resolution images and data on the moon, which is irregular in shape. and filled with craters.
And she added that the first flight towards “Deimos” began in late January and continues this February, with the probe approaching the lowest distance from the new moon, which supports the acquisition of the digital exploration camera, infrared spectrometer, and ultraviolet spectrometer. Capturing high-resolution images, observations and data on the Moon.
She indicated that the probe succeeded in executing the first two out of three propulsion maneuvers using the main propulsion system in September 2022 and January 2023, to enable orbit change, and this is the first time that the remote propulsion system has been used to achieve the orbital corrections necessary to monitor the moon.
She said: The Hope Probe revolves in its planned elliptical scientific orbit, which ranges between 20,000 and 43,000 km, with an inclination towards Mars of 25 degrees, which gives it a unique ability to complete one orbit around the planet every 55 hours, and to capture a complete sample of its data every 55 hours. 9 days.