First image of Mars by the UAE's Hope probe

Sylvie Claire / February 15, 2021

The UAE's Hope probe sent its first image of Mars a few days after successfully entering the orbit of the Red Planet, the national space agency announced this Sunday.

The image was taken Wednesday, one day after the Emirates successfully placed their probe, called Amal in Arabic (Hope in French), around the orbit of Mars, becoming the first Arab country to achieve such a feat. The Emirates Mars mission captured the image of the largest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons, emerging in the early morning sunlight, the agency said in a statement.

The first image of Mars taken by the first Arab probe in history, tweeted Mohammed ben Rached al-Maktoum, the Emir of Dubai and Prime Minister of the country.

The probe is designed to provide a complete picture of the planet's weather dynamics. But it is above all a step towards a much more ambitious goal: the establishment of a human colony on Mars within 100 years.

Unlike the Chinese Tianwen-1 and the American Mars 2020 missions, Amal will not land on the Red Planet. It will use three scientific instruments to monitor the Martian atmosphere and is expected to begin transmitting information in September, data that scientists around the world will have access to.