The Emirates Mars Mission (EMM), the first interplanetary exploration mission by an Arab country, has resulted in a wave of new observations, discoveries and insights into Mars’ unique atmosphere, its composition and dynamics.
New avenues of exploration
Observations of Mars’ discrete aurora and unprecedented views of dayside oxygen and carbon monoxide structures in the planet’s atmosphere mean that new avenues of exploration are being opened up by the data being sent back from the Hope spacecraft. Scientists are beginning to understand Mars’ atmosphere.
The probe, Hope, set out to measure the global, diurnal and seasonal response of the Martian atmosphere to solar forcing; the atmospheric conditions relating to the rate of atmospheric escape – particularly of hydrogen and oxygen and the temporal and spatial behaviour of Mars’ exosphere. With early results showing exciting observations of Mars’ discrete aurora and additional bandwidth and resources available to encompass additional observations, further measurements of auroral phenomena have been brought into the Mars Mission’s goals, extending its capabilities beyond Hope’s planned goals.
Hope is a fully autonomous spacecraft, carrying three instruments to measure Mars’ atmosphere. Hope weighs 1,350 kg, and is approximately the size of a small SUV, the spacecraft was designed and developed by MBRSC engineers working with academic partners, including LASP at the University of Colorado, Boulder; Arizona State University, the University of California, Berkeley, Space Science Institute, Boulder and Northern Arizona University.
Success assured
“The success of Hope is already assured from our early results and observations and we can already see a vast number of new potential avenues of exploration opening up as a result of our early data,” said Emirates Mars Mission Science Lead, Hessa Al Matroushi. “We are seeing Mars in remarkable detail and are able to characterise the diurnal behaviours of Mars’ atmosphere for the first time ever. The potential we are now seeing from the mission undoubtedly exceeds our expectations.”
Mars Hope carries three instruments; the Emirates eXploration Imager (EXI) digital camera, which captures images of Mars with a resolution of 2 to 4 km along with measuring the amount of water ice and ozone in the lower atmosphere; the Emirates Mars InfraRed Spectrometer (EMIRS), which measures the energy emitted from the surface and atmosphere, calculating the global distribution of dust, ice cloud, and water vapour in the lower atmosphere, and the Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS), which measures oxygen and carbon monoxide in the thermosphere and the variability of hydrogen and oxygen in the exosphere.
Mars’ water
Christopher Edwards, Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer (EMIRS) Instrument Lead, said, “The ability of EMM to observe Mars at all local times on short timescales enables the daily variation of these clouds to be studied. The EMIRS observations show that clouds are thickest and cover the most area early in the morning and late in evening with fewer clouds near midday. The comparison of clouds observed by EMIRS at thermal-infrared wavelengths to those observed by EXI at visible wavelengths can provide further information about the clouds, such as size of the water ice aerosols that make up the clouds.”
“As on the earth, clouds on Mars are an important part of the water cycle and characterising how they change from hour-to-hour and day-to-day is an important part in understanding both the present and past climates,” said Michael Wolff, EXI Instrument Lead.
“By comparing the images of hydrogen that we gain from the EMUS instrument to the maps of water ice, water vapor, and dust acquired by the EXI and EMIRS instruments, scientists will be able to reconstruct the details of how hydrogen is transported through the atmosphere and how water has been lost from the planet over the history of the solar system,” said EMM Deputy Science Lead and EMUS Instrument Lead Justin Deighan.
The probe entered Mars orbit in February of this year. Hope is following its planned 20,000 – 43,000 km elliptical science orbit, allowing it to complete one orbit of the planet every 55 hours and capture a full planetary data sample every nine days throughout its two year mission.
Hope’s observations and the data from the Mars mission are available to download here.
