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DUBAI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM – 10th Feb, 2023) Emirates Mars mission ‘Hope Probe’, the first Arab-led planetary exploration mission, will enter a new orbit.
The orbital transfer will allow the Hope probe to fly about 150 km away and obtain unprecedented information about Deimos, the smaller and outermost of the two natural moons of Mars.
The historic new move will allow the Hope Probe to move into a new elliptical orbit around Mars, following a Lambert orbital transfer maneuver using its momentum change. The new orbit will help gather data about Deimos while allowing the probe to continue its original mission of recording data about the Martian atmosphere.
Deimos is less visible than the red planet’s second moon, Phobos, which has been widely observed since its discovery in 1969. Deimos orbits Mars in a larger orbit, making one revolution around the planet every 30 hours.
“The Deimos campaign aims to provide the international scientific community with previously unseen observations and data. The Hope Probe will capture high-cadence images and data of the irregular Moon and heavy craters during the flyby at various times,” said Hessa Al Matrushi, Chief Scientific Officer of the Mars Mission. .
The first flight of Deimos began at the end of January and will continue until February 2023, when the probe will make its closest approach to the moon, which will allow the Emirates Exploration Hope Probe Imager (EXI), the Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS) and the Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer (EMUS), to capture high-cadence images and detailed observations of the moon.
To enable the orbital transfer maneuver, the Hope Probe completed two of three maneuvers using its main thrusters in September 2022 and January 2023, the first time the thrusters were remotely activated for the necessary orbit correction.
Mars orbiter Hope is currently in an elliptical orbit between 20,000 and 43,000 km at a 25-degree inclination to the planet, giving it the unique ability to complete one orbit around the planet every 55 hours, and every nine days to get comprehensive information. A slight change in the probe’s orbit will allow new observations of Deimos, while obtaining information about the red planet’s atmosphere. In fact, Deimos’ flight burns change Hope’s orbit enough that all of the mission’s main objectives remain completely unchanged.
