The United Arab Emirates scientist Sarah Al-Amiri is leading her country’s first mission to Mars. She is set to create history by leading first interplanetary mission of the Arab world. The female scientist has named the spacecraft ‘Hope’ as she wants the project to inspire the next generation to take up sciences in school.

The road to Mars is going to be the busiest ever as apart from the UAE, the United States and China are also embarking on missions this summer. The trio will be taking advantage of the biennial window when Earth and the Red Planet are closest together.

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The planned launch of the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) on July 15 has been delayed due to bad weather conditions at Japan’s remote Tanegashima spaceport from where it will despatch satellite at the end of this week now. The EMM aims to capture the most comprehensive picture yet of Mars to reveal novel insight into it and how it works.

The scientists will arrive back from the 500-million-km journey in Feb 2021.

“This is the golden age of space in the UAE,” explained Fatma Hussain Lootah, manager of the team’s instrument science section.

“This is the time we decided to stand out in maybe a sector nobody expected us to develop in, because it’s knowledge-based, it’s very science-based.”