Some 3,000 images from an instrument aboard the United Arab Emirates’ Hope Martian orbiter were used.
A group of scientists from the Center for Space Sciences of the New York University in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) developed a global map of Mars in the form of a rotating globe that will provide essential information for understanding climate changes on the red planet. reported last Thursday the emirate academic institution.
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To build the Martian map projection, around 3,000 high-resolution images were used, which were captured during one Martian year (the equivalent of two Earth years) by the Emirates Exploration Imager (EXI) instrument. EXI is aboard the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) orbiter, also known as Hope.
The researchers combined the EXI photographic observations to obtain a color composite map, showing regions and geological features of Mars in high resolution. Likewise, you can see ice caps, mountains and inactive volcanoes, as well as ancient rivers, lakes, valleys and impact craters.
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“The complete Mars map also brings the United Arab Emirates and the Arab world one step closer to achieving the ambitious EMM mission goal of providing a complete global picture of the Martian climate,” said scientist Dimitra Atri, who noted that, previously, regarding 30 space probes “only managed to capture a snapshot of the Martian climate, whereas the EMM will track seasonal changes over the course of a Martian year.”
On the other hand, he mentioned that Hope helped Emirati researchers develop “the global image of the planet due to its strategic position.” According to Atri, this is because the orbiter “goes around Mars in an elliptical orbit that allows it to see from much further away than any other spacecraft.”
Read more: How have water and carbon dioxide moved across Mars?
- In July 2020, United Arab Emirates He launched the Hope space probe into space from the Tanegashima Space Center (Japan). Hope entered Mars orbit in February 2021
