The UAE is launching a mission to Mars: See their probe launch today
The United Arab Emirates delivered on its mission to Mars when the Hope probe slipped into orbit on February 9, 2021. What began as a tightly scripted arrival has stretched into years of sustained observation and a formal extension through 2028. The spacecraft continues to circle the planet, recording atmospheric behavior and moonlight encounters that the original plan never scheduled.
The original team behind the effort combined roughly 150 Emirati engineers with international partners under project manager Omran Sharaf. Their work produced a probe that has already outlived its first science window and remains the only orbiter-focused mission among the three spacecraft launched in 2020 that is still operating in an extended phase.
United Arab Emirates’s space team
The UAE Space Agency assembled its core group well before launch, drawing on local talent and outside expertise to keep the project on schedule. Project manager Omran Sharaf coordinated the effort from design through orbit insertion and the subsequent science campaigns. That structure allowed the agency to move from a first-time interplanetary flight to an extended mission without rebuilding the organization from scratch.
Hope probe
The Hope probe left Tanegashima Space Center in July 2020 and completed its Mars Orbit Insertion on February 9, 2021. Science operations began in May of that year. Since then the spacecraft has maintained its planned 55-hour imaging cycle while adding flybys of the Martian moon Deimos and extended atmospheric monitoring through the 2028 extension.
Mission to Mars
NASA’s Perseverance rover and China’s Tianwen-1 also launched in July 2020. Perseverance touched down and began surface operations, while Tianwen-1 successfully landed and conducted its own measurements starting in 2021. Hope remains the only one of the three still functioning solely as an orbiter in the extended phase, supplying continuous atmospheric data rather than surface samples.
Mission Extension and Longevity
The UAE Space Agency announced in 2026 that operations would continue through 2028. The decision gives the mission another full set of seasonal cycles and allows repeated observations of the same atmospheric features at different times of the Martian year. Mission planners cited the need to capture longer-term variability that a shorter campaign could not record.
Scientific Discoveries and Data Impact
By the time the extension was approved, Hope had already delivered more than 10 terabytes of data, roughly ten times the original target. The probe released the first close-up global images of Deimos in 2023. Working with NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, it identified patchy proton auroras in the upper atmosphere. The same datasets fed into revised global maps of Mars released that year.
UAE Space Ambitions Beyond Hope
The UAE now ranks among nine countries actively exploring Mars. The decision to extend Hope reflects a broader plan to keep building operational experience and infrastructure for future missions. Officials have framed the extension as part of a long-term program rather than a one-off achievement.
International Data Sharing and Collaboration
Hope maintains a formal data-sharing agreement with NASA’s MAVEN team. Multiple batches of observations, totaling hundreds of gigabytes, have been released to the global research community. The open policy has allowed outside groups to incorporate UAE measurements into studies of atmospheric escape and seasonal dust activity.
The probe continues its 55-hour observation loop, dropping out of contact for roughly 15 minutes each orbit when it passes behind the planet. Those brief blackouts are now treated as routine rather than risks. The mission’s original goal of mapping daily and seasonal atmospheric changes has been met and exceeded, with new targets added as the data volume grew. The UAE’s first deep-space effort has settled into steady, extended operations that keep returning measurements well past the dates listed in the 2020 press kits.
