The First Arab Space Mission to Mars Has Been Launched By the UAE

A United Arab Emirates spacecraft rocketed away Monday on a seven-month journey to Mars, beginning the Arab world’s first space mission.

The takeoff of the Mars orbiter named Amal, or Hope, from Japan marked the start of a rush to fly to Earth’s neighbour that includes attempts by China and the United States.

The UAE said its Amal was functioning after launch as it heads toward Mars.

Omran Sharaf, the project director of Emirates Mars Mission, told journalists in Dubai about an hour and a half after the takeoff that the probe was sending signals. Sharaf said his team now would examine the data, but everything appeared good for now.

People cheered and clapped, with one woman offering a festive cry common for weddings.

Hope is set to reach Mars in February 2021, the year the UAE celebrates 50 years since the country’s formation.

It blasted off from the Tanegashima Space Center on a small southern Japanese island aboard a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ H-IIA rocket, on time at 6:58 a.m. local time into the blue sky. Mitsubishi said the probe has been successfully separated from the rocket and is now on its singly journey.

The launch had been postponed for five days because of stormy weather.

At Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai, Emirati men in their traditional white kandora robes and women in their black abayas watched fascinated as the rocket lifted off. As its stages separated, a cheerfulness went out from a group of Emirati men seated on the floor. They began clapping, one using his face mask due to the coronavirus pandemic to wipe away a tear.

“It was great to see everything going according to schedule today. It looks like things are all on track. It’s a huge step in terms of space exploration to have a nation like the UAE taking that giant leap to send a spacecraft to Mars,” Astronomer Fred Watson said.

“Being on route to a planet like Mars is an exceptional achievement.”

A newcomer in space development, the UAE has successfully put three Earth observation satellites into orbit. Two were developed by South Korea and launched by Russia, and a third — its own — was launched by Japan.

A successful Hope mission to Mars would be a major step for the oil-dependent economy seeking a future in space, coming less than a year after the launch of the first UAE astronaut, Hazzaa Ali Almansoori. He spent over a week at the International Space Station last fall.

The UAE has set a goal to build a human colony on Mars by 2117.

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