UAE’s Hope Probe to move to new orbit to study Mars’ smaller moon, Deimos

The UAE’s ‘Hope Probe’ is transitioning to a new orbit around Mars to study one of the red planet’s moons.

The announcement was made on February 9, marking two years since the Hope Probe reached Mars, becoming the world’s fifth country and the first in the Arab World to do so.

Read: Historic feat: One year since the UAE’s Hope Probe reached Mars

The new orbit will facilitate gathering data on Deimos – the outermost of Mars’ two natural satellites – while allowing the probe to continue its original mission and capture data on the red planet’s atmosphere.

The Hope Probe’s journey of exploring new frontiers continue. The Arab world’s first interplanetary mission began minor maneuvers towards Deimos and capture unprecedented data about one of Mars’ lesser-observed moons. pic.twitter.com/RjcZmz1nw1

— Hope Mars Mission (@HopeMarsMission) February 9, 2023

Deimos is the smaller of Mars’ two moons. Being only 9 by 7 by 6.8 miles in size, Deimos completes a revolution around Mars every 30 hours, according to the NASA website. Deimos is also less observed compared to Phobos, the red planet’s second moon.

“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 irregularly shaped, crater-heavy moon, during fly-bys at different times,” said Hessa Al Matroushi, Emirates Mars Mission Science Lead.

The first Deimos fly-by began in late January and continues through February 2023, as the probe moves to its closet approach to the moon. This will enable the probe’s instruments – Emirates Exploration Imager, Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer, and the Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer, to capture high cadence images and observations of the moon.

The Hope Probe is currently in its elliptic orbit between 20,000 and 43,000km with a 25-degree incline towards Mars, enabling it to complete one swirl around the planet every 55 hours.

The probe will transition into a new elliptic orbit around Mars, following a Lambert orbital transfer maneuver.

The slight change in the probe’s orbit will allow it to capture new observations of Deimos, while capturing data on the red planet’s atmosphere.

The first Arab interplanetary space mission commenced early on July 20, 2020, when the Hope Probe lifted off from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Centre on a 493 million km journey to Mars.

Read: Video: UAE Hope Probe bound for Mars successfully launches from Japan

On February 9, 2021, the probe achieved its most critical task of entering the orbit around Mars successfully. The Mars Orbital Insertion process, lasted 27 ‘dark’ minutes as it was controlled automatically without any interference from the ground station.

Read: UAE Hope Probe achieves historic milestone, successfully enters Mars orbit