Current Affairs Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination (Topic: HOPE: UAE’s First Mission to Mars)

Current Affairs Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination

HOPE: UAE’s First Mission to Mars

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has launched a spacecraft to Mars, “HOPE” and “Al-Amal” in Arabic, making it the first Arab country to do so.
A Japanese rocket launched the United Arab Emirates’ first mission to Mars July 19, an orbiter that will study the planet’s weather while demonstrating the country’s growing space capabilities.

The spacecraft itself, however, is not Japanese. It was designed and managed by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) in the United Arab Emirates.
Relying on existing technology but placed in a unique equatorial orbit, the spacecraft should give scientists the data they need to piece together how weather on Mars changes over the course of a day and of a year at every spot on the globe, and how the planet is losing its atmosphere.
NASA is also supporting the mission by providing Hope access to the Deep Space Network for communications

HOPE, which is about the size of an SUV, carries three instruments. One is an imager, which will capture photographs in optical and ultraviolet light. The other two are spectrometers, which split light into the specific wavelengths present, one working on ultraviolet and one on infrared light.
As a team, the three instruments will allow Hope to study the thin, carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere of Mars in order to better understand the Red Planet's weather and how it loses its atmosphere out to space.
While the mission's instruments build on existing technology, the Hope spacecraft will use a unique tactic to gather its science data: traveling in an orbit around Mars no probe has taken before. Every 55 hours, the spacecraft will complete a loop around the planet's equator, flying between 12,000 to 27,000 miles (20,000 to 43,000 kilometers) above the Martian surface.
Hope will capture the ebbs and flows of weather on Mars to a degree that wasn’t possible before.
Hope's arrival in February 2021 is set to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the UAE's formation.

The possibility that the atmosphere of Mars was once warm enough to allow water to flow through its surface, which could mean life existed there too.
The curiosity about existence of life on Mars because of the possible presence of liquid water on it, either in the past or preserved in its subsurface. This question makes the planet more intriguing for scientists since “almost everywhere we find water on Earth, we find life”.
Further, if Mars harboured a warmer atmosphere enabling water to flow in its ancient past (3.5-3.8 billion years ago), and if microbial life existed on it, it is possible that it exists in “special regions” even today. But regardless of life having existed on Mars or not, there is the idea that humans themselves might be able to inhabit the planet one day.

Mars is very thin, consisting of mostly carbon dioxide with no breathable oxygen, making it difficult for astronauts to survive there. F
Further, the landscape of Mars is freezing, with no protection from the Sun’s radiation or passing dust storms.
Therefore, more research, technology and testing is required to be able to send humans to Mars.