A gargantuan mission calls for an exceptional vision. The UAE is blessed with a leadership that believes the journey of development will always remain a race for excellence.

It is such recognition of the need to set high goals and earnest efforts to achieve results that has placed the UAE as a shining star in the eyes of the global community.

With His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, and His Highness Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, signing the UAE’s Mars mission programme’s “Hope Probe” structure, the country is right on track with its space goals.

As Sheikh Mohammed himself tweeted, “Today me and brother Mohamed Bin Zayed signed the last piece of the outer structure of the Hope Probe... the first Arab-Islamic probe that will reach Mars… We carved the phrase ‘the power of hope shortens the distance between the earth and the sky’ to send a message to all Arab youth that we are able to succeed and compete and that we do not lose the power of hope, that move the mountains.”

The Hope Probe will be the first probe to provide a complete picture of the Martian atmosphere and its layers when it reaches the red planet in 2021.

It will help answer key questions about the global Martian atmosphere and the loss of hydrogen and oxygen gases into space over the span of 1 Martian year.

The mission has pertinently been named “Hope” and Sheikh Mohammed had lucidly elucidated the reasons behind the name earlier.

As he put it, “This probe represents hope for millions of young Arabs looking for a better future. There is no future, no achievement, no life, without hope.”

The mission is just not about one country reaping benefits. The probe will create mankind’s first integrated model of the Red Planet’s atmosphere. The spacecraft will collect and send back to earth over 1,000 gigabytes of new Mars data.

Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre is responsible for the execution and supervision of all stages of the design, development and launch of the Hope Probe in 2020.

Nearly three months since making history as the first UAE astronaut to travel to space, Hazza Al Mansoori has now focused his attention on the UAE’s Hope Mission, set to reach the Red Planet on the country’s 50th anniversary, making it the ninth country to touch down on the planet.

Al Mansoori is also working on the UAE’s main space mission, the hundred-year programme named 2117 with an objective of sending people to Mars by this date.

In an interview to air on Euronews on Dec.18, Al Mansouri highlighted interesting details about the 2117 mission, stating, “One of the really most challenging things is food security, energy, how we can survive there with the high radiation affecting our bodies. So, all of these challenges that we encounter we have to study them now from here and to build up also a culture of science.

Just to mention we will build up like a simulation of habitat here in the UAE. We simulate the living on Mars.

And with that, we will build up like different buildings, museum and also scientists will be hosted also in this habitat simulation or to study more Mars environment.”