The United Arab Emirates' first-ever mission to Mars has launched, beginning a seven-month journey to the Red Planet in a historic mission. UAE is all set to develop its scientific and technological capabilities and reduce its reliance on oil.

The Hope Probe blasted off from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center at 1:58 a.m. UAE time/6:58 a.m. Japanese time Monday (2158 GMT Sunday) for a seven-month journey to the red planet, where it will orbit and send back data about the atmosphere.

Hope has three instruments on board to carry out a number of different scientific goals. It will study hydrogen and oxygen in the Marian atmosphere, and help to work out how Mars lost its atmosphere over the last few billion years.

Perhaps most interestingly, Hope will act as a Martian weather satellite, providing updates on dust storms and ice clouds on Mars, monitoring the weather at different times of the day, and tracking seasonal changes.

The Emirates Mars Mission has cost $200 million, according to Minister for Advanced Sciences Sarah Amiri. It aims to provide a complete picture of the Martian atmosphere for the first time, studying daily and seasonal changes.

The UAE first announced plans for the mission in 2014 and launched a National Space Programme in 2017 to develop local expertise. Its population of 9.4 million, most of whom are foreign workers, lacks the scientific and industrial base of the big space mission nations.

It has an ambitious plan for a Mars settlement by 2117. Hazza al-Mansouri became the first Emirati in space last September when he flew to the International Space Station. To develop and build the Hope Probe, Emiratis and Dubai’s Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) worked with U.S. educational institutions. The MBRSC space center in Dubai will oversee the spacecraft during its 494 million km (307 million mile) journey at an average speed of 121,000 km per hour. The science mission of the spacecraft will begin in May 2021, after its instruments have been checked out. It also has a camera on board, to take images of the surface and return them to Earth.

Source- Reuters