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Emirates Mars Mission: New data from Hope Probe fascinates scientists worldwide

Al-Amal shares fourth set of data; includes information, images and insights

The Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) has shared the fourth tranche of Hope Probe's scientific data with the international community.

The latest released data include new observations from the Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS) to provide better coverage of the aurora.

Over 118.5 gigabytes of raw data has been uploaded in this phase to the EMM Science Data Centre from the Arab world's first interplanetary mission, Al Amal. The new findings bring the total data released by the Hope Probe to 688.5 gigabytes.

This data release includes information, images and insights collected by the state-of-the-art scientific equipment carried by the spacecraft between December 2021 and February 2022.

This is available at available at https://sdc.emiratesmarsmission.ae

The latest released data include new observations from the Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS) to provide better coverage of the aurora. The EMUS was also to successfully observe the solar energetic particles and galactic cosmic rays through a detector background monitoring. Also, as part of a detector characterisation experiment, the EMUS observed the ability to operate on higher gain, giving more sensitivity to observations.

Eng. Omran Sharaf, Project Director of Emirates Mars Mission, said, "These new observations are a testament to the quality of the Hope Probe in driving key research and insights on Mars and its atmosphere, and we are thrilled to share the latest observations with the global scientific community. As the Probe continues its planned mission to orbit around Mars, we will continue to identify ways in which we can enrich our discoveries and observations to deliver above and beyond our mission, to further enhance the international community's knowledge and understanding of the Red Planet, and to bolster the UAE's position in the global space domain."

The data is released every three months after Hope's instruments capture it and are catalogued and processed by the project's team.

To date, 1.7 terabytes of this data has been downloaded, with the first, second and third batches of data receiving considerable interest from scientists, researchers, experts, and astronomy enthusiasts worldwide.

Hessa Al Matroushi, Emirates Mars Mission Science Lead, said, "The recent coverage from the Mars Hope Probe is a tremendous feat and is evidence of the boundless potential that our instruments have in achieving science beyond what it was designed for. The latest insights on Mars and its atmosphere reaffirm that there is much to discover, and we are looking forward to seeing the mission's objectives of providing useful scientific data, enhancing national capabilities, and fostering global collaboration come to fruition with every new data collected."

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The Hope Probe's orbit, which is between 20,000 and 43,000km with a 25-degree incline towards Mars, gives it the unique ability to complete one orbit around the planet every 55 hours, capturing comprehensive data every nine days.

The Hope Probe is studying the current state of Mars' atmosphere and weather and the reason for the escape of hydrogen and oxygen from its upper atmosphere.

Additionally, it studies the relation between the higher and lower atmospheres of Mars and various other phenomena like dust storms, weather variations, and atmosphere dynamics.