This is how Emirati engineers are preparing for Hope Probe arrival in Mars

Gulf News

Emirati engineers at Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre are confident of a successful Hope Probe Mars orbit insertion (MOI) on February 9. Gulf News talks to three MBRSC engineers and gets inside the Emirates Mars Mission command centre.  Read the full story here: https://bit.ly/39CZq6v   Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  #UAEnews #HopeProbe #Mars

Transcript

00:00We're pretty ready for the Mars orbit insertion, I would say, and we're confident about it.

00:13Now my role is to track where the satellite is at all times in order to basically know when to

00:19do the maneuvers and when to basically slow down in order to get captured by Mars.

00:26The Mars orbit insertion, basically we have to slow down the speed of the spacecraft to a speed

00:32in which we can get captured by the Martian atmosphere. So we'll be burning about half a ton

00:37of fuel for 28-29 minutes just to slow down in order to get captured by Mars. It's a very crucial

00:45maneuver for us, of course. It's very important for us to be like pretty accurate with it because

00:50slowing down the spacecraft, if we don't slow it enough, we're not going to get captured by

00:55the Martian gravity and basically we're going to escape into an orbit that's going to orbit the

01:00Sun and we won't be able to get back into Mars until two years later. However, if we burn too

01:06much then we risk crashing into Mars. We found the right balance in order to do the maneuver

01:12and basically have a safe margin both ways. We've been ready for this maneuver. We have all of the

01:17contingency plans and everything in place so we're pretty happy with the way our design is. Hopefully

01:22it's going to go fine. Success is really within our grasps for this mission. Although the failure

01:29rate is 50% for Martian missions, but so far what we've seen we're on the right path.

01:36I study the impact of varying atmospheric conditions to the lower atmosphere on derived

01:42thermophysical properties on the Martian surface. Thermophysical properties are properties that

01:47affect the energy budget. So the ultimate goal is to use diurnal data from EXI and EMIRS to

01:53investigate this impact. So after receiving the scientific data, the science team works on

01:58developing the scientific models and algorithms for the scientific data processing and interpretations.

02:05And after receiving the science data, the science team will be working on calibrating, verifying,

02:11and analyzing this data. The significance of this data is basically we will have diurnal coverage

02:16which hasn't been found before or investigated before by previous missions. So having this

02:24day-to-day, day-to-night coverage, seasonal coverage, global coverage, gives us an advantage of

02:31knowing what's happening on Mars. History of Mars, we know that it was a wet environment,

02:38but nowadays we know that it's a dry environment. So we needed to understand what's happening on

02:43Mars. Having this data, especially from the UAE, can inspire the youth to go into the science field

02:50since it's a scientific mission. And it's actually one of the programmatic objectives is to enhance

02:56the knowledge of the scientific community and the engineering community as well in the UAE and to

03:02build those capabilities in the UAE. FLASAT is an important part of this mission. It has been used

03:07prior to launch to simulate and understand the design of the spacecraft and how it could function

03:14to meet our objectives. After launch even, it became more important where we are through our

03:19seven months of transition from Earth to Mars. There have been several activities on board the

03:24spacecraft that has been simulated on FLASAT to understand how the spacecraft is going to work,

03:28what functionality or capability of the spacecraft would be reached within this environment, the deep

03:35space environment, since we don't understand that completely without even having components out

03:39there. As we approach MOI, Mars Orbit Insertion, FLASAT even became more important where we need to

03:45precisely understand how the spacecraft is going to function and be captured by Mars. During this

03:49period, FLASAT has been used to test several activities or several events of the MOI

03:54to understand how the spacecraft is going to respond to things in an unexpected way, where we

04:00tried turning off components or understand what failures could happen. Since MOI is very critical,

04:06we have a 30 minutes window to burn and be captured by Mars Orbit. It's very hard to measure confidence

04:12or success rate in this matter, but we built something that we're confident in. We ran

04:19several tests, hundreds, thousands of tests, whether that's analysis or even simulation on FLASAT.

04:25The spacecraft team has monitored the spacecraft throughout this period and

04:30we believe that we have the confidence into performing a successful Mars Orbit Insertion.

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