UAE Hope Probe: Meet Omran Sharaf, the team leader behind the first Arab interplanetary mission

Gulf News

Emirates Mars Mission project director shares his personal, professional insights  Read the full story here: https://bit.ly/3srwPr5   Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  #UAEnews #Mars #SpaceMission

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00:00We announce the success of the arrival of the UAE in the Red Ship Circuit.

00:30Being proud that we reached that point.

00:32After we successfully arrived, that load, or that kind of stress, went away.

00:37For the first few minutes, I was still in shock, actually.

00:40The past seven years, like, really passed really fast.

00:42I mean, I literally saw it in front of me, like, pass in front of me in a second.

00:48At that moment, I remembered, like, I was just remembering all these different kind of challenges

00:54that the team had to go through to be able to reach this point.

00:57The support that we received from the leadership throughout this journey,

01:00it just took me a while to actually realize that.

01:02But it was a good feeling.

01:03Receiving the first image was very positive.

01:06Reaching Mars was a big news for us.

01:09But then, getting the first photo was kind of a proof for us, like, as a team,

01:15a stamp of completing this phase successfully of reaching Mars.

01:20The nice thing about this photo, which was taken at an altitude of 25,000 kilometers above Mars' surface,

01:26we processed the image in a way for it to look how we would see it as humans

01:32if we were actually at the height of 25,000 kilometers above Mars.

01:36That's how we would see it with our naked eyes.

01:38The reason why the UAE was able to reach Mars in such a short time frame, which is not usual,

01:43and also with a very small budget, relatively speaking, it's because of international collaboration.

01:47As I was announced by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, 450 people worked on this mission.

01:53From those 450 people, 200 Emiratis, 150 are from our academic partners,

01:59University of Colorado, our main partners, Arizona State University, and University of California, Berkeley.

02:04Also about 100 subcontractors.

02:06If this mission proved something, it proved that the importance of collaboration,

02:10the direction of the UAE government to us the first day that they met us and gave us a direction was,

02:14don't start from scratch, start where others ended, collaborate with others, work with others.

02:19So in missions like this, if you want to deliver ambitious missions like this,

02:22in a cost-effective way, in an efficient way, collaboration is critical to that.

02:26I really hope that this mission brought a lot of lessons learned

02:30that we could share and would like to share with other Arab nations and countries

02:34and work with them hopefully, not just regionally, but also internationally with other nations

02:38to be able to take on much more ambitious projects and bigger projects

02:42that will benefit humanity and us as a region and us as a nation also.

02:47This mission was an excellent learning experience for me.

02:51It exposed me to different kind of things.

02:54It's not just technical challenges, administrative challenges, political challenges.

02:58And the fact that the government expected us as a team to create impact in different sectors,

03:04that's something that's quite unique to this mission.

03:06Other missions similar to this don't have to deal with that.

03:09In our case, we had to because, as the government announced before,

03:12that going to Mars is not the goal, it's a need for a much bigger objective.

03:15And that kind of experience is extremely valuable and it's very difficult to put a price tag on it, to be honest.

03:22One nice thing about the UAE is that it brings opportunity.

03:26Regardless of what your age group is, there is opportunity.

03:29And I would really like to see other people, other young Emiratis and other young Arabs

03:34who go through similar journeys, have such ambitious projects with difficult requirements

03:39that really pushes you out of your comfort zone.

03:41And that's the only time you actually learn.

03:43If you want to be competitive, if you want to be creative and innovative, you need to be out of your comfort zone.

03:48And a mission like this definitely pushed me and the whole team out of our comfort zone.

03:52I am confident that similar opportunities will be there for Emirati youth, much more and bigger projects.

03:58At the same time, I would really like to see other Arab youth go through similar experiences

04:03and get pushed out of their comfort zone and see them also help in building this region and bring us all closer together.

04:10Currently, reaching Mars is just 50% of the mission.

04:14There is another 50% left now, in which we have to actually deliver the science, find new discoveries,

04:19share the data with the rest of the world and bring something back to humanity from this mission.

04:23The mission itself, from the government expectation, as was mentioned by the Prime Minister,

04:28is that it achieved more than 90% of the requirements that the government set.

04:34It's linked to the impact that they want to see.

04:36That, for us as a team, showed us the support that we have from the government,

04:41the level the government has confidence in the work of our team members,

04:45and the mentality or that mindset that we have in the UAE, within the leadership,

04:49is that failure is an option, regardless of what the outcome was.

04:53For us, whatever you did is successful, before even reaching Mars.

04:58However, we have the remaining 10%, which is basically around the science work that we need to be doing.

05:05For us, as a mission, that's 50%.

05:07Because we need to reach either the extended mission, or hopefully after the extended mission,

05:12the mission termination, to be able to reach that.

05:14Currently, we are in our capture orbit.

05:16So, for the next two months or less, we'll basically be preparing the spacecraft

05:21by calibrating the science instruments and making sure that the data that we'll be collecting,

05:25once we are in the science orbit, is up to the quality that scientists would have

05:31or meets their expectations and requirements to be able to do actual proper analysis of the Martian atmosphere.

05:36Also, we're preparing for the maneuvers that we have to conduct to transition into our science orbit.

05:42Currently, as per the plans, we plan to have three maneuvers to transition to the science orbit.

05:48As a UAE, we are focused on the mission. There's a lot of work needs to be done.

05:51UAE is an ambitious nation. We always have plans for the future.

05:54The mission we have ahead of us is quite difficult and challenging, and we're focusing on that.

05:57At the right time, we will definitely announce what's next.

06:01NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

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