UAE to Join the Mars Club

Whatever happened to starting small with a probe to the moon and then heading to the planets?  The United Arab Emirates (UAE) plans to launch a probe to Mars in the next six years.  The UAE will build the spacecraft while an international source will provide the rocket. 

According to the UAE press, this mission will be different from previous mission:

Its unique orbits and instruments will produce entirely new types of data that will enable scientists to build the first truly holistic models of the Martian atmosphere.

This mission will produce the first truly global picture of the Martian atmosphere. It will study how the lower and upper layers of the atmosphere interact with each other. It will search for connections between today’s Martian weather and the ancient climate of the Red Planet.

The road to Mars is littered with the debris of past missions by the Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Europeans, and, yes, the Americans (do not mention metric).  Even so, India successfully launched a Martian probe, so the competition only increases.  If the Marsshot has replaced the moonshot, that is not such a bad thing.  I would rather nations parade their rockets for interplanetary travel rather than their rockets of war.  And it is nice to have some hopeful news from this part of the world.  I hope it continues.

Image Credits:  Kamran Jebreili/AP (top image) and Emirates247 (bottom image)