Live stream of Mars being orbited by spacecraft

[tony4563]

Hope it's ok to post this.

Amazing real time live stream from Japanese spacecraft "Hope" which was launched last July and has just reached the planet Mars.

Absolutely stunning to watch and see just what has been achieved

 

 

[Stargazer33]

I thought Hope was the UAE probe?

[tony4563]

Bryan.. Japanese rocket by the sounds of it but UAE project.

 

The spacecraft, dubbed Hope, launched July 19, 2020, atop a Japanese H-IIA rocket, then spent seven months trekking to the Red Planet. Today (Feb. 9), Hope needed to fire its thrusters for nearly half an hour straight to slow down enough to slip into orbit around the Red Planet, from 75,000 mph to 11,000 mph (121,000 kph to 18,000 kph). Mission personnel on the ground could only watch what happened and hope for the best.

"This has been a remarkable journey of humanity," UAE Space Agency chairperson Sarah Al Amiri said during preparations for the orbital insertion maneuver. With the successful Mars orbit insertion, the UAE becomes the fifth entity to reach the Red Planet, joining NASA, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency and India. Today's success also puts the $200 million Hope spacecraft on the bright side of grim Mars mission statistics: About half of flights to the Red Planet fail. Mars orbit insertion was a critical step that, for Hope, required a 27-minute burn of its six thrusters that the mission team could not precisely practice in advance. Hope is now in a temporary orbit that it will retain for a few months as it powers on its instruments and settles into its new home.

Mission personnel plan to relocate the spacecraft to its science orbit in May. That science orbit will see the spacecraft circling high over the planet's equator every 55 hours, a new orbit for a Mars spacecraft that will give Hope a unique opportunity to study large-scale atmospheric phenomena on Mars. The Hope mission is scheduled to last for a full Martian year (687 Earth days) The Hope spacecraft carries three instruments that will allow scientists to study the weather near the surface of Mars, the connections between different layers of the atmosphere, and how Mars loses atmosphere to space. Scientists leading the mission hope that this data will help them understand, for example, how dust storms at the surface of Mars affect atmospheric loss and how weather systems around the globe relate to each other.

The UAE has sped into the space sector: Hope launched a little more than a decade after the nation's first Earth-orbiting satellite, DubaiSat 1, did so. The nation has pushed space exploration as a way to develop its science and technology know-how and to buffer its economy, which is largely built on oil. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The United Arab Emirates has made history as the first Arab country to reach Mars.

The Emirates Mars mission, named the Hope probe, reached the red planet at 7:42 p.m. Tuesday, Emirates time, sent its signal back to Earth just over half an hour later. The ground control team at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai erupted in cheers.

“204 days and more than 480 million kms later, the Hope Probe is now in the Capture Orbit of #Mars,” the official Twitter account of the Hope Mars Mission tweeted shortly afterward, with the hashtag 

The feat is monumental. Experts estimated the chance of successfully entering Mars’ orbit at about 50%, since more than half of all Mars missions actually fail. The crucial time window was a terrifying and suspenseful 27 minutes during which the Hope probe had to dramatically slow down from its speed of 100,000 kilometers per hour (62,137 mph) to 18,000 kph by firing its six thrusters for 27 minutes exactly. 
WATCH: Mars Cam Views from NASA Rover during Red Planet Exploration & NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Landing 
 

[Brutha]

If you scroll down a bit, they add right at the bottom that it is an animation showing the current position of the probe, not an actual live feed... a little bit cheeky I think!

[lee g]

I thought this was to good to be true

[tony4563]

Ah, thanks for clearing that up Brutha. Missed that bit!  😳

I was in two minds to delete the thread because I couldn't find it anywhere else in the news.

Still, it's a bit different and worth keeping on, so long as people understand it's NOT an actual live feed as I thought.