Missions to other worlds can take decades to plan and more months or even years to travel to their target. Unfortunately, to get to their destinations, these missions have to launch when the planets are correctly aligned so they can best take advantage of our Earth’s motion as well as gravitational assists from other worlds and then get to their destination when it is at just the right place in its orbit. Mars is close enough to our orbit that we see the right alignments about every eighteen months, and right now, Earth and Mars are perfectly placed for a launch. Originally, there were going to be major missions from both NASA and the ESA, as well as missions from new countries, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
But Space is Hard (TM). ESA has had to postpone its Rosalind Franklin rover until the next launch window, and the NASA Perseverance rover is going to potentially launch outside the ideal window due to various issues with the rocket and doesn’t yet have a launch date set.
On schedule and ready to go, however, is that UAE mission: their first interplanetary mission and the first such mission from any Arabic speaking country. Called Al Amal, which translates to “hope”, their orbiter will study Mars’ atmosphere in detail, adding to the dataset started by NASA’s Mars MAVEN orbiter. This mission is set to launch sometime this month from Japan on an H-IIA. If we can, we’ll bring you this launch live on Twitch.
