Hope Mars orbiter knuckles down to work
Early results from science campaign publicized
Updates from the science team involved with the United Arab Emirates’ Hope Mars orbiter, which arrived at Mars in February, have been sparse, but the spacecraft has clearly been hard at work. The image below was shared in a series of tweets published yesterday, showing how Hope is literally seeing Mars in a new light.
Taken by the Emirates Ultraviolet Spectrometer on 24 and 25 April, the two images show Mars and the cloud of atmospheric hydrogen that surrounds it. The intention is to use the dataset to reconstruct the 3D distribution of hydrogen in Mars’ vicinity, and to learn more about how it is produced through the process of splitting water molecules by sunlight, as well as its eventual escape into space.