UAE postpones launch of its Mars mission for 2nd time

Dubai, Jul 15 (efe-epa).- The United Arab Emirates’ space agency on Wednesday postponed the launch of its mission to Mars for the second time due to the weather conditions.

The spacecraft was initially scheduled to take off on 14 July at 20.51 pm GMT time but it was moved to 16 July 8:43pm GMT due to bad weather.

“A new launch date in July will be announced in the next 24 hours,” the UAE space agency tweeted on Wednesday.

The launch will take place at Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center.

The mission will seek to better understand the environmental challenges facing the region, with rising temperatures threatening keys resources like food and water in the UAE.

Mars offers scientists an example of a planet that transformed from a wet atmosphere to a dry and arid one.

The mission will be study water vapor, ice clouds, ozone and dust on the red planet employing two infrared spectrometers, an imager and the Emirates explorer imager EXI to take color photos of Mars.

Using both instruments together, they will map all the different wave lengths that have been observed.

“Better understanding the historical changes that Mars went through allows us to understand how planetary systems that are sort of similar to Earth evolved with time and what change happened and what influences changes on those planetary systems. To understand what could possibly happen to earth,” Sarah al-Amiri, Minister of State for Advanced Sciences said.

The spacecraft was assembled in the University of Colorado Boulder because some of the facilities were already based there.