Hope, the Emirates Mars Mission

What is the Emirates Mars Mission?

The Emirates Mars Mission is the United Arab Emirates’ first mission to another planet, and Hope is its spacecraft.[1][3] Hope is called Al Amal in Arabic. The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) in Dubai led the work, with three US partners: the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder, Arizona State University and the University of California, Berkeley.[1] The UAE Space Agency funds and oversees the mission.[3][4]

Work began in 2014.[1] Hope launched on a Japanese H-IIA rocket from Tanegashima Space Center on Jul 19, 2020 (UTC), early on Jul 20 local time, and entered orbit around Mars on Feb 9, 2021.[1] The braking burn lasted about 27 minutes and used nearly half its fuel. Hope ran it on its own: radio signals took about 10.6 minutes each way, too long for anyone on Earth to step in.[1] Its arrival fell in the year the UAE marked 50 years since its founding, a goal set at the start.[1][3]

Mission control is at MBRSC in Dubai, with a backup at LASP in Boulder, Colorado.[1]

Figures from the mission team’s 2022 overview paper and the UAE Space Agency. Data and paper totals are as of February 2026.[1][2][3]

Why does Hope orbit so far from Mars?

So it can see almost a whole side of Mars at once, and catch every part of the planet at every time of day.[1] Hope circles 20,000 to 43,000 km (12,400 to 26,700 mi) above Mars, far higher than most orbitersOrbiterAn orbiter circles Mars without landing, studying the planet from above — and many also relay rover data back to Earth.More in the glossary, and takes about 55 hours per lap.[1][3] That is about 2.25 Martian days, so each lap brings a different part of Mars into view. Every four laps, about every 9–10 days, Hope completes a map of the planet across the whole day.[1]

That fills two gaps the team set out to close: how Martian weather changes from morning to night, and what the whole planet looks like over a short span of time.[1] After arriving, Hope spent about 75 days reshaping its first orbit, about 1,000 by 49,000 km (620 by 30,400 mi), into this one. Science began on May 23, 2021.[1]

What instruments does Hope carry?

A camera and two spectrometers, which read Mars in visible, infrared and ultraviolet light.[1]

• 01EXI, the Emirates eXploration Imager. A camera with two telescopes and 12.6-megapixel sensors that takes pictures of the whole disk of Mars in six ultraviolet and visible colors. It was designed to track water-ice clouds and ozone in the lower atmosphere. LASP was the main partner in building it.[1]
• 02EMIRS, the Emirates Mars InfraRed Spectrometer. Built at Arizona State University, it measures dust, water-ice clouds, water vapor, surface temperature and air temperature up to 60 km (37 mi).[1]
• 03EMUS, the Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer. Developed by MBRSC and LASP, with detectors from UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, it reads the ultraviolet glow of the upper atmosphere. From that the team works out how much oxygen and carbon monoxide is up there, and how much hydrogen and oxygen sits in the exosphere, the thin outer edge where gas escapes to space.[1][7]

What has Hope found?

New kinds of aurora, weather caught as it happens, and clues to where the moon Deimos came from.[3][5][8]

• 01Aurora across the night side. EMUS took the first snapshots of Mars’s discrete aurora across nearly a whole side of the planet, in far-ultraviolet light. It found aurora in more than 75% of its images of the night side, with patterns shifting within 15–20 minutes, and a new type its team calls “sinuous” aurora: a snake-like streak stretching thousands of kilometers into the night side.[5] “The sinuous discrete aurora was a shocking discovery,” said Rob Lillis of UC Berkeley, an EMUS team member.[12]
• 02Patchy aurora by day. Working with NASA’s MAVEN orbiter, Hope found “patchy” proton aurora across the day side. Earlier views had shown this kind of aurora as smooth and even. NASA said the patches form when turbulent conditions around Mars let the solar wind reach the upper atmosphere directly.[6]
• 03Shifting oxygen and carbon monoxide. EMUS tracks how much atomic oxygen and carbon monoxide the thin upper atmosphere holds, place by place and through the seasons. Its early results showed the ultraviolet glow of both gases varying.[7]
• 04Weather caught in the act. On Sep 10, 2021, EXI photographed a dust storm with a weather front at northern mid-to-high latitudes, in four pictures 2–3 hours apart. A large front there at that season is unusual, the scientists wrote.[8] On Dec 18, 2022, it took 13 pictures in under 8 hours, watching ripples in the air called lee waves near Lyot crater turn into a local dust storm by late morning.[9] Researchers have also fed EMIRS temperatures into a Mars climate model and, with EXI images of a long water-ice cloud, identified a warm front.[10]
• 05Deimos up close. In 2023 Hope adjusted its orbit to fly past Deimos, Mars’s outer moon, coming within about 100 km (60 mi), the closest any spacecraft had come since Viking in 1977.[3] All three instruments observed it, including parts of the far side whose makeup had never been studied. The team said Deimos’s infrared signature looks more like basaltic Mars than a D-type asteroid, pointing to “a planetary origin.”[3][4]
• 06An interstellar comet. In October 2025 Hope turned away from Mars to photograph the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS in visible and ultraviolet light, the UAE Space Agency said.[2]

EXI has also followed water-ice clouds through the day for a full Martian year, at 2–4 km (1.2–2.5 mi) per pixel.[1][11]

Can anyone use Hope’s data?

Yes. All of Hope’s science data goes public, with no period when only the team can use it.[1] New data has come out about every three months on the mission’s Emirates Space Data Center, sdc.emiratesmarsmission.ae.[1][3][13]

The mission set out to collect about 1 terabyte of data. By February 2026 it had released 10 terabytes in 16 releases to more than 200 academic and research institutions, and its results had appeared in more than 35 peer-reviewed papers, the UAE Space Agency said.[1][2]

How long will Hope keep working?

Until 2028, after the UAE Space Agency’s latest extension.[2] Hope’s main science phase began on May 23, 2021 and was planned to last one Martian yearMars YearA Mars year lasts 687 Earth days (about 669 sols), and scientists number them from Mars Year 1, which began on April 11, 1955.More in the glossary, 687 Earth days.[1] In April 2023 the agency extended the mission for a further year.[3][4] On Feb 17, 2026 it announced a new extension, to 2028.[2]

The agency says running Hope longer gives its team deep-space experience for its next mission, the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt.[2] It is targeting a launch from Japan in the first quarter of 2028 for that mission’s MBR Explorer spacecraft, which is meant to end its trip by setting a probe down on the asteroid Justitia.[14]

Mission timeline

1. 2014The UAE begins work on the mission.[1]
2. Jul 19, 2020Launches on an H-IIA rocket from Tanegashima, Japan (UTC date; Jul 20 in Japan).[1]
3. Feb 9, 2021Enters orbit around Mars.[1]
4. May 23, 2021Begins science from its 20,000–43,000 km orbit.[1]
5. Sep 10, 2021Photographs a dust storm with a weather front.[8]
6. Early 2023Adjusts its orbit and starts flying past Deimos.[3]
7. Apr 24, 2023Team shows its Deimos results; the mission is extended for a further year.[3]
8. October 2025Photographs the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS.[2]
9. Feb 17, 2026The UAE Space Agency extends the mission until 2028.[2]

Sources

1. Space Science Reviews — The Emirates Mars Mission (Amiri et al., 2022)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
2. Emirates News Agency (WAM) — UAE Space Agency announces extension of Emirates Mars Mission until 2028Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
3. Emirates Mars Mission via European Geosciences Union — Emirates Mars Mission Unveils New Deimos Observations at EGU23, Announces Mission ExtensionPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
4. LASP, University of Colorado Boulder — New Emirates Mars Mission observations hint at the origins of Mars’ mysterious moonPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
5. Geophysical Research Letters — First Synoptic Images of FUV Discrete Aurora and Discovery of Sinuous Aurora at Mars by EMM EMUS (Lillis et al., 2022)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
6. NASA — MAVEN and EMM Make First Observations of Patchy Proton Aurora at MarsPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
7. European Geosciences Union (Copernicus) — Key Results from the Emirates Ultraviolet Spectrometer on the Emirates Mars Mission (Chaffin et al., EGU22)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
8. Geophysical Research Letters — A Frontal Dust Storm in the Northern Hemisphere at Solar Longitude 97: An Unusual Observation by the Emirates Mars Mission (Gebhardt et al., 2022)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
9. Geophysical Research Letters — Sub-Hourly Observations of Dust Storm Growth, Lee Waves, and Lyot Crater, by the EMM Camera EXI (Gebhardt et al., 2023)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
10. Geophysical Research Letters — First Assimilation of Atmospheric Temperatures From the Emirates Mars InfraRed Spectrometer (Young et al., 2022)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
11. European Geosciences Union (Copernicus) — One Martian Year of Observations by the Emirates eXploration Imager (EXI) (Wolff et al., EGU23)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
12. Emirates News Agency (WAM) — Emirates Mars Mission discovers mysterious Martian auroraPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
13. Emirates Mars Mission — Emirates Space Data CenterPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
14. Emirates News Agency (WAM) — Hamdan bin Mohammed witnesses unveiling of UAE-developed probe for Emirates Mission to Asteroid BeltPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026