The UAE Mars Probe creates a stunning new map of the Red Planet

A new map of Mars shows the Red Planet in stunning detail, revealing a wealth of fascinating geological features as seen from orbit.

The high-resolution map could help scientists answer a number of pressing questions about Mars Including how it became a dry, barren, barren land despite previously being abundant in liquid water.

The Mars map was created by a team of scientists led by New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Space Science Center (Opens in a new tab). The researchers used data collected from orbit around Mars by Emirates mission to explore Mars (EMM), also known as Hope or Hope.

Related: A new Martian water map reveals the history of the Red Planet

The map shows the Red Planet through the eyes of the ship’s state-of-the-art imaging system, the Emirates Exploration Imager (EXI), and is a testament to the UAE’s growing influence in science. NYU Abu Dhabi wrote in a statement (Opens in a new tab) They hope the new Mars map will motivate young people in the UAE to pursue careers in STEM disciplines.

“We plan to make our map available for the entire planet, as part of a new, more advanced Mars atlas, that we have worked on, and it will be available in both English and Arabic as soon as it is published,” NYU Abu Dhabi (NYU Abu Dhabi) group leader and research scientist Dimitra Atri said in the statement. “The hope is that this accessibility will make it a great tool for researchers, as well as students to learn more about Mars, and highlight the potential that the UAE space sector can offer.”

To create the map, Atre and the team took more than 3,000 EXI observations that took more than a Martian year, which is the equivalent of two years here at Mars. Land, and sew them together to build a color composite. The resulting map shows many of the Red Planet’s key geological features in high resolution.

The map reveals polar ice caps, mountains, and tall, inactive volcanoes, as well as remnants of ancient rivers, lakes, and valleys that overflowed with liquid water some 3.5 billion years ago. As such, the map could help planetary scientists better understand how the Martian climate changed over billions of years resulting in the dry, arid world we see today.

“The complete map of Mars brings the UAE and the Arab world one step closer to achieving the ambitious goal of the EMM mission to provide a complete global picture of the climate of Mars,” Atre added. “More than 30 previous spacecraft have only been able to capture a snapshot of Martian weather, while the EMM will track seasonal changes over the course of a Martian year.”

By allowing scientists to study the distribution of impact craters across the planet’s dry surface, the map also reveals the history of early times. asteroid Mars bombing. As such, superimposition of EXI images can help researchers better understand the conditions of the early noisy Solar System When space rock effects were more common than they are today.

The Hope Probe is the first interplanetary mission from the United Arab Emirates and from the Arab world as a whole. Commissioned by the leaders of the United Arab Emirates in 2014, the spacecraft was launched from Japan on July 20, 2020. After a journey of about seven months, Hope reached Mars orbit on February 9, 2021.

“The Hope Probe helps researchers build this global picture of the planet because of its strategic location,” Atri said. “Hope orbits Mars in an elliptical orbit, allowing it to be observed from a much greater distance than any other spacecraft. This strategic location helps researchers build a global picture of the planet.”

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