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The Hope spacecraft (Al Amal) will circle Mars in a 55-day orbit, its atmosphere.
The probe will launch on a Mitsubishi H-IIA booster. The rocket isn’t quite as famous as the likes of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rockets, but it does have a great launch history, with over 40 successful launches under its belt, mostly of Japanese satellite systems.
The Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre will carry a livestream of the launch from Japan, which you can watch via this link. You can also watch at YouTube below and set a reminder, if you need.
The stream will continue until around 4 p.m. PT when the Hope probe is set to separate from the booster.
Additional streams are available on the Hope Mars mission YouTube channel.
Hope is the first interplanetary mission led by an Arab, Muslim-majority country and, if successful, will add another nation to the list of Martian explorers.
“The intent was not to put a message or declaration to the world,” Sarah Al Amiri, chair of the UAE Council of Scientists and deputy project manager for the Emirates Mars Mission, told CNET in March. “It was, for us, more of an internal reinforcement of what the UAE is about.” The historic launch is set to be livestreamed across the globe.
The satellite will study the connections between Mars’ lower and upper atmosphere and examine what causes the loss of hydrogen and oxygen into space. It’ll collect data for two years after achieving its orbit around Mars in February 2021. There’s an option to extend the mission to 2025.
On board Hope there are 3 tools that will make research into the Martian environment more intense. There is a high-resolution camera known as Emirates eXploration Imager, a UV camera known as the Emirates Mars UV spectrometer and an infrared scanner called Emirates Mars Infrared Spectrometer.