The UAE’s Hope Probe Reaches Mars Orbit

On 9 February 2021, an uncrewed spacecraft built by the United Arab Emirates successfully completed a twenty-seven-minute engine burn to slip into orbit around Mars. Conceived at a government retreat in late 2013 and officially announced the following year, the Emirates Mars Mission sought to expand national technological capacity and gather comprehensive data on the Martian atmosphere. Known as Hope, or al-Amal, the probe made the UAE the fifth nation to reach the planet and, like India before it, succeeded in reaching Mars orbit on its first attempt.

The spacecraft was designed and managed by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai, supported by funding and oversight from the UAE Space Agency. To acquire expertise, Emirati engineers partnered with American academic institutions, including the University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Arizona State University, and the University of California, Berkeley. Assembly occurred primarily in Boulder before the craft returned to Dubai, after which project managers navigated international travel disruptions in early 2020 to transfer the probe to Japan for its journey into space.