Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid tweets first image of Mars by UAE's Hope Probe

Dubai: His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, has shared the first image of Mars taken by UAE's Hope Probe on Twitter.

"The first picture of Mars captured by the first-ever Arab probe in history, 25,000 km above the Red Planet's surface," Sheikh Mohammed tweeted.

His Highness Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, also tweeted the first picture transmitted by Hope Probe from Mars.

After years of planning, the fraught preparations before launch and months of trundling through the dark, inky vacuum of space, the Hope Probe finally reached the orbit of the red planet at 7.42pm UAE time on February 9. The UAE is only the fifth country to reach Mars.

With its three scientific instruments, Hope Probe will map a complete portrait of the Martian atmosphere and evaluate its seasonal and daily changes. It will collect more than one terabyte (1,000GB) of new data, which will be shared with more than 200 academic and scientific institutions worldwide for free.

There are several spacecraft orbiting Mars, but they all follow paths around the equator and only see a particular area of the planet each day. Hope Probe will circle the equator, allowing it to get a complete picture of the planet every nine days — including every spot on the surface every day.

The scientific instruments will allow Hope to observe Mars’ atmosphere in wavelengths from the infrared into the far-ultraviolet.