Sheikh Mohammed tweets first image of Mars taken by Hope Probe
- 22 Jul 2020
Gulf Today, Staff Reporter
His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, shared the first image taken by the Hope Probe of Mars from afar.
Sheikh Mohammed said on Twitter, “We received the Hope Probe's first sighting of its destination, Mars, after the spacecraft travelled one million km into space. Beyond the sky is where our dreams start.”
The image had a caption which read, “First Mars sighting by Hope Probe (taken by star trackers)”
The Hope Probe (Al Amal in Arabic) blasted off from the Tanegashima Space Center aboard a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ H-IIA rocket on time at 6:58 am (2158 GMT Sunday) after being delayed five days by bad weather.
Mitsubishi later said the probe successfully separated from the rocket and was now on its solo journey to Mars.
"The UAE is now a member of the club and we will learn more and we will engage more and we’ll continue developing our space exploration programme,” UAE Space Agency chief Mohammed Al Ahbabi told a joint online news conference from Tanegashima.