The spacecraft Hope sent by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the orbit of Mars has returned with stunning pictures.
The spacecraft entered into the orbit on Tuesday and made UAE the first Arab nation in history to create a scientific presence on the Earth’s near neighbour.
The spacecraft was sent to study the weather and climate system and other areas of astronomy.
The state of the art Hope is performing two jobs including capturing high-resolution pictures of the surface of Mars and acting as a telecommunications reply station for landed robots in contact with Earth.
The picture is captured by Hope’s EXI instrument from the distance of 24,700 Kilometers (km) above the Martian surface on Wednesday, one day after entering the orbit of the Red Planet.
“The transmission of the Hope Probe’s first image of Mars is a defining moment in our history and marks the UAE joining advanced nations involved in space exploration,” the mission’s Twitter account stated. “We hope this mission will lead to discoveries about Mars which will benefit humanity.”
Hope is now orbiting around Mars as close as 1,000km from the planet and goes out to almost 50,000km.
Hope will be carrying high-level research on Mars like monitoring how energy moves through the atmosphere from the bottom to the very top.
Out of several, one of the main things Hope was to study is the leakage of hydrogen and oxygen neutral atoms in space.
This research will open wonders that will help the scientists to understand how Mars has turned from a wet, water abundant planet to a cold and dusty ball.
This coming week, it is the turn of the Americans. Their Perseverance rover reaches Mars on Thursday and will try immediately to land in a near-equatorial crater called Jezero.
