Adding a touch of color to a map of Mars, courtesy of the UAE’s Hope spacecraft

Since the UAE’s Hope (Al-Amal) rover safely entered orbit around Mars on February 9, 2021, it has been busy using its onboard instruments to measure everything they can about not only the planet’s atmosphere but also its surface and how both change seasonally. The first months of results from this detailed snapshot of Mars have now been released in full color March Atlas Good website and site PDF version The atlas can be downloaded from the website.

although Emirates mission to explore Mars Not the first to capture the surface of Mars or its seasons – with the Mars Exploration Orbiter (MRO) Context Camera (CTX) giving us the result of many thousands of shots in Massive monochrome mosaic On Mars – It’s good to remember that hope is just beginning. The current atlas is the product of around 3,000 images captured from the Emirates eXploration Imager (EXI) Multiband Camera (with spatial resolution better than 8 km), with new images in the pipeline.

Hope transitioned from a lower orbit of 1,072 kilometers to a higher science orbit on March 29, giving the orbiter a good view of the seasonal shifts on the Red Planet. Combined with data from other existing orbits of Mars, we should be able to put together the most detailed atlas yet, even before more helicopters zip along the surface of Mars.