UAE Hope mission returns first image of Mars
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56060890
UAE Hope mission returns first image of Mars
Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent
Published3 hours ago
The United Arab Emirates' Hope mission has returned its first picture of Mars.
The spacecraft entered into an orbit around the Red Planet on Tuesday, making the UAE the first Arab nation in history to have a scientific presence at Earth's near neighbour.
This first image will be followed by many similar such views of Mars.
Hope was put in a wide orbit so it could study the planet's weather and climate systems, which means it also will see the planet's full disk.
It's a type of view that's familiar fare from Earth-based telescopes, but less so from satellites actually positioned at Mars. They traditionally have been kept close in to the planet so they can get high-resolution pictures of the surface and act as telecommunications relay stations for landed robots in contact with Earth.
The picture at the top of this page was captured by Hope's EXI instrument from an altitude of 24,700 km (15,350 miles) above the Martian surface at 20:36 GMT on Wednesday - so, one day after arriving at the Red Planet.
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Hope is now running in an initial ellipse around Mars that comes as close as 1,000km from the planet and goes out to almost 50,000km. Over the course of the next few weeks, this will be trimmed to a 55-hour, 22,000km-by-43,000km orbit that is inclined to the equator by about 25 degrees.
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