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Hope, the Eye in Mars’ Sky
Three Mars missions, and most of the buzz is about Perseverance, NASA’s rover, which will attempt planetfall on Thursday.
A lot fewer people are talking about Hope…but Hope is also going to play a key role in our future exploration of the red planet.
What is Hope?
Hope (more correctly الأمل or Al Amal) is a probe that is designed to orbit Mars for at least one Martian year, which is 687 days.
It is orbiting at a much higher altitude than most Mars orbiters. Most Mars missions have been established to study the surface of the planet, and both Perseverance and the Chinese Tianwen-1 mission are designed to look for signs of life.
Hope has a different mission.
It’s there to look at the weather.
What Hope Will Tell Us?
We know some stuff about Martian weather, because our rovers have experienced it. Dramatic opening of The Martian aside, the weather on Mars tends to be fairly gentle, if very dusty, due to the low atmospheric pressure.