Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

See the Hope mission’s first stunning image of Mars

By
The Hope Probe's first image of Mars
The Hope probe’s first image of Mars Emirates Mars Mission/Mohamed Bin Zayed

A gorgeous image of our planetary neighbor has been captured by the UAE’s Hope mission to Mars. Snapped from 15,500 miles away from the surface, the image shows some of Mars’s most recognizable features including Olympus Mons, the largest known volcano in the solar system.

The mission’s first image was posted on Twitter by the Crown Prince of UAE, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. “The transmission of the Hope Probe’s first image of Mars is a defining moment in our history and marks the UAE joining advanced nations involved in space exploration,” he shared. “We hope this mission will lead to new discoveries about Mars which will benefit humanity.”

Recommended Videos

The Hope mission arrived at Mars this week, successfully entering orbit through a difficult braking maneuver. This was the first interplanetary mission by an Arab nation, and with its successful insertion into orbit, the UAE joined a small number of countries that have successfully sent a mission to Mars, including the U.S., the former Soviet Union, India, and Europe.

Related

This list was joined by China later in the week as well, with the successful entering into orbit of the Tianwen-1 mission. NASA’s Perseverance rover is set to land on the red planet this coming week too.

The reason the three missions all launched and are arriving around the same time is due to them using a path between Earth and Mars called the Hohmann transfer orbit. This takes advantage of the point in time at which the two planets are closest together to plot the most efficient course to travel between them.

It’s impressive that both UAE and China succeeded in getting their craft into orbit successfully, as approximately half of all historic missions to Mars have failed due to the many challenges of controlling a spacecraft as it approaches another planet.

Now, the Hope mission can begin its scientific work, which includes studying the martian atmosphere to learn more about how the upper and low atmospheres interact through the planet’s different seasons. It will also investigate atmospheric escape — the phenomenon via which Mars is gradually losing its atmosphere.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Check out these stunning images of SpaceX’s recent Starship test
SpaceX's Starship spacecraft during a test in June 2023.

As part of preparations for the second test flight of its Super Heavy rocket and Starship spacecraft, SpaceX this week performed a static fire test of the latter.

The exercise, which took place at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, involved firing the Starship’s six engines for several seconds.

Read more
See seasonal changes on Mars in two stunning images from MAVEN
mars maven ultraviolet seasons orbit16863 apo ladfit localff png

The planets in our solar system experience seasons because of the way that they are tilted in their orbits, so one hemisphere is facing the sun more often at some times of year than others. However, there's another factor which also affects weather and conditions on some planets, which is their position in their orbit around the sun. Earth has a relatively circular orbit, so the differences caused by it being slightly closer or further from the sun at different points are minimal. But Mars's orbit is much more eccentric or oval-shaped than Earth's, meaning conditions differ based on when the planet is closer to the sun.

That effect is illustrated in two images of Mars recently released by NASA, which show the planet at its closest and furthest point from the sun. Taken by a Mars orbiter called MAVEN, or Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, the images were taken six months apart in July 2022 and January 2023 respectively, showing how the environment of the planet changes with both season and the planet's orbit.

Read more
See a postcard from Mars taken by the Curiosity rover
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture panoramas of “Marker Band Valley” at two times of day on April 8. Color was added to a combination of both panoramas for an artistic interpretation of the scene.

Today, you can enjoy a stunning new view of Mars, thanks to a postcard from the Gale Crater taken by the Curiosity rover. The image combines two different views of the same area and is colorized to show off the undulating martian landscape in a region called the Marker Band Valley.

The image, shared by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), shows the back of the rover and views of the tire tracks it has left across the martian surface as it has driven. The view on the left side of the image was taken in the morning of April 8, at 9:20 a.m. local Mars time, while the image on the right side was taken on the same day but in the evening, at 3:40 p.m. local Mars time. The two images have been blended together to show how the landscape looks different throughout the day.

Read more