The United Arab Emirates have moved the first Arab Mission to Mars due to bad weather. The launch of the rocket with the Mars probe "Al-Amal" ("hope") from the Japanese spaceport Tanegashima could not take place due to the weather conditions, as planned, on Wednesday, 05.51 PM (local time, 22: 51 CEST on Tuesday), informed the government of the Emirates via Twitter. A new launch date will be announced "in a few hours".

According to the plans of the Emirates Al to "-Amal" from February to the Red planet to circumnavigate. The object of the 1350-kilogram probe is to provide a comprehensive picture of the Martian atmosphere and its meteorological dynamics. You should benefit from a particularly favourable launch window: around 55 million kilometers, the Mars, the earth is currently as close as only every 26 months.

Behind the Mission, an ambitious target of the Emirates In just under a hundred years, you want to build a settlement on Mars. The Mission is not to bring only scientific knowledge, but also the economy and education of the United Arab Emirates have a positive influence. You want to be independent from oil. In the past few years, the Emirates were therefore, more and more of their Oil revenues in new technologies and were able to start in this way, a successful satellite program.

With "Al-Amal" wants to be included in the Arab country in an exclusive Club: so Far only the US, India, the former Soviet Union, and the European space Agency (ESA) missions with a Mars-directed probes.

in addition to the United Arab Emirates want to start this month, China and the United States new Mars missions. The people's Republic of want. your small remote-controlled Rover "Tianwen-1" between the 20 and 25. July on the six month journey and for the first time to Mars to reach. "Tianwen" means "questions to the heaven".

The most ambitious projects the U.S. space Agency NASA followed with "Mars 2020". Your Rover will spend a Martian year, so about 690 days on earth, there and therefore bears the name "Perseverance" - German for "endurance". By Collecting rock and soil samples in previously unexplored Jezero crater is that it allows conclusions to be drawn on forms of life, there were probably earlier on Mars. The rocket with the Rover, at the earliest, on 30. July from Cape Canaveral to start from.

The Mars arouses, among other things, that is why so much interest, because a few years ago, it was shown that once water - the origin of life - on its surface float. Apart from earth, Mars is "the only Planet that we have been able to find signs of former life," says the astrobiologist from the French space Agency, CNES, Michel Viso. "And the more we learn about it, the more hope there is." In the exploration of Mars, it seemed, "that's just something Exciting happens and people want to be a part of it." The long-term goal of manned missions to the Red planet, so Viso were next. "This represents the 'ultimate limit' of the exploration of space."

sti/wa (afp,dpa)

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