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Emirates Mars Mission postponed because of bad weather

Tuesday 14 July 2020 10:32 BST

An employee works at the control room of the Mars Mission at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), in the Gulf emirate of Dubai (GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP via Getty Images)

The Emirates Mars Mission has been delayed because of bad weather.

The historic launch was due to happen from Japan on Tuesday, but "weather conditions at the launch site" led the UAE space agency to postpone it.

The Hope Probe, as the Arab world's first interplanetary mission is known, will instead be launched on Friday, 17 July local time, or 8.43pm on Thursday evening in the UK.

It is one of three missions to Mars hoping to launch in quick succession, and will be followed by China and the US's own launches.

The three almost simultaneous launches are a result of the fact that Mars missions must be timed for the period when Mars, the Earth and the Sun align to allow a probe to efficiently sent to the red planet.

That also means that any more significant delay will force the missions to be pushed back by more than two years. The launch window only opens once every 26 months.

The UAE's spacecraft is named Amal, or Hope in Arabic. It was built in partnership with the University of Colorado Boulder, and will arrive in the same year that the UAE marks its 50th anniversary.

"The UAE wanted to send a very strong message to the Arab youth," project manager Omran Sharaf told the Associated Press.

"The message here is that if the UAE can reach Mars in less than 50 years, then you can do much more. ... The nice thing about space, it sets the standards really high."

Unlike the Chinese and US missions, the UAE's spacecraft will not try to land on the surface of Mars, but rather stay in orbit above it. It will stay in an orbit tens of thousands of kilometres above the surface, studying the planet's atmosphere and monitoring climate change.

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

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1/10Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

Mystic Mountain, a pillar of gas and dust standing at three-light-years tall, bursting with jets of gas from fledgling stars buried within, was captured by Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope in February 2010

Nasa/ESA/STScI

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

The first ever selfie taken on an alien planet, captured by Nasa's Curiosity Rover in the early days of its mission to explore Mars in 2012

Nasa/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

Death of a star: This image from Nasa's Chandra X-ray telescope shows the supernova of Tycho, a star in our Milky Way galaxy

Nasa

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

Arrokoth, the most distant object ever explored, pictured here on 1 January 2019 by a camera on Nasa's New Horizons spaceraft at a distance of 4.1 billion miles from Earth

Getty

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory in January 2012. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust

Nasa

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

The first ever image of a black hole, captured by the Event Horizon telescope, as part of a global collaboration involving Nasa, and released on 10 April 2019. The image reveals the black hole at the centre of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides about 54 million light-years from Earth

Getty

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

Pluto, as pictured by Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft as it flew over the dwarf planet for the first time ever in July 2015

Nasa/APL/SwRI

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

A coronal mass ejection as seen by the Chandra Observatory in 2019. This is the first time that Chandra has detected this phenomenon from a star other than the Sun

Nasa

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

Dark, narrow, 100 meter-long streaks running downhill on the surface Mars were believed to be evidence of contemporary flowing water. It has since been suggested that they may instead be formed by flowing sand

Nasa/JPL/University of Arizona

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures

Morning Aurora: Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station in October 2015

Nasa/Scott Kelly

China's spacecraft is due to take off around 23 July, though it is not clear exactly when. As with other missions, relatively little has been said about the launch.

Nasa's Perseverance rover will not leave until 30 July, after some delays. That has led to fears that it could miss out on the launch window and have to wait until 2022.

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