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" The United Arab Emirates Is boldly going where no Middle Eastern country has gone before: Mars. The UAE wants to launch a four-year mission to Mars with the Hope probe (Al Amal in Arabic), which will spend up to four years in orbit studying the atmosphere, including how Mars lost its ancient oceans. Launch is set for 2020. If it sounds pretty similar to the current MAVEN mission in orbit around Mars, don&amp;#039;t worry. It&amp;#039;s not a retread, they say, but more a complimentary mission, with MAVEN principal investigator Bruce Jakosky coming aboard as a co-investigator. Where MAVEN has studied specifics of the upper atmosphere, Hope will delve into details of the lower atmosphere and interactions between solar radiation and surface features of Mars, as well as scouring for atmospheric evidence of water.   Jakosky told Forbes that the UAE is trying to make a serious entry into space exploration rather than just a proof of concept. The probe will collect around one terabyte of data, sending it back for the principal investigators to study before being released to the wider scientific community, as is typical of most space missions.  So far, Iran and Israel are the only other space-capable countries in the Middle East, with Iran making its first launch in 2009. However, neither country has launched an interplanetary mission. If the UAE mission is successful, it will be following in the footsteps of the Mangalyaan craft from India, which launched in 2013 and successfully reached orbit in September 2014, remaining operational today. To date, that is the only Mars mission not sent by Roscosmos, ESA, or NASA. Source: Forbes "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a15556/uae-mars-probe-hope/>