UAE Successfully Launches Hope Probe, Arab World's First Mission To Mars (theguardian.com) 102
The first Arab space mission to Mars has blasted off aboard a rocket from Japan, with its unmanned probe -- called Al-Amal, or Hope -- successfully separating about an hour after liftoff. The Guardian reports: The Emirati project is one of three racing to Mars, including Tianwen-1 from China and Mars 2020 from the United States, taking advantage of a period when the Earth and Mars are nearest. In October, Mars will be a comparatively short 38.6m miles (62m km) from Earth, according to Nasa. Hope is expected to reach Mars's orbit by February 2021, marking the 50th anniversary of the unification of the UAE, an alliance of seven emirates. Unlike the two other Mars ventures scheduled for this year, it will not land on the planet, but instead orbit it for a whole Martian year, or 687 days.
While the objective of the Mars mission is to provide a comprehensive image of the weather dynamics in the red planet's atmosphere, the probe is a foundation for a much bigger goal -- building a human settlement on Mars within the next 100 years. The UAE also wants the project to serve as a source of inspiration for Arab youth, in a region too often wracked by sectarian conflicts and economic crises. On Twitter, the UAE's government declared the probe launch a "message of pride, hope and peace to the Arab region, in which we renew the golden age of Arab and Islamic discoveries."
While the objective of the Mars mission is to provide a comprehensive image of the weather dynamics in the red planet's atmosphere, the probe is a foundation for a much bigger goal -- building a human settlement on Mars within the next 100 years. The UAE also wants the project to serve as a source of inspiration for Arab youth, in a region too often wracked by sectarian conflicts and economic crises. On Twitter, the UAE's government declared the probe launch a "message of pride, hope and peace to the Arab region, in which we renew the golden age of Arab and Islamic discoveries."
They actually build anything? (Score:1, Informative)
No, they just financed it to put their name on it
Re:They actually build anything? (Score:5, Informative)
They have to start somewhere, according to wikipedia they had "150 Emirati engineers" involved in the project and I'm sure they at least played some role in choosing what to put on the probe -- if not instrument design.
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And 40% were women.
Re:They actually build anything? (Score:5, Informative)
I would not discount Emirati intellectual contributions here, they did a lot more than just hand money over to put their name on someone else's project.
150 Emirati scientists are involved with this project, setting the mission's research goals and designing the spacecraft to meet their needs with the help of more experienced American university scientists. For construction Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre took exactly the same approach NASA would and they contracted with the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. Emiratis will operate the spacecraft and analyze the data.
The UAE has the money to re-invent the wheel if they had to, indigenously building small, rudimentary satellites the way Iran and North Korea have. But this isn't just some kind of publicity stunt; it's Emirati researchers doing real, cutting-edge science, and they took the sensible route.
Good for them. It's a much better use of their wealth than building another skyscraper that's too tall to be practical [wikipedia.org].
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Even more revealing was them launching this probe from Japan, which the last I checked, is not an Arab country. They couldn't find a spot on that vast Emirati desert from where to launch?
On Twitter, the UAE's government declared the probe launch a "message of pride, hope and peace to the Arab region, in which we renew the golden age of Arab and Islamic discoveries."
If Martians do exist, it'll be fascinating to see how receptive they are to islam, an ideology that emphasizes Arab supremacy
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I'm not a fan of islam (see my other comment on this thread), but I don't think the ideology "emphasizes Arab supremacy" .. can you point to some evidence of that in their texts or Quran?
Arab-centric Islam (Score:1)
Kinda funny, that, in the age when Jesus Christ simply being White is considered a sign of White supremacy, a different standard is applied to Islam, which mandates, that certain prayers must be read in Arabic [submission.org]...
If, as we're told by our illustrious betters in the academia [washingtonpost.com]: “Every time you see white Jesus, you see white supremacy,” — why is the Arabic-only requirement not proof of Arab supremacy in Islam?
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I'm not a fan of islam (see my other comment on this thread), but I don't think the ideology "emphasizes Arab supremacy" .. can you point to some evidence of that in their texts or Quran?
Quite a few things from their Hadiths and Sira: - Allah can only be properly worshiped in Arabic, since that's the only language he knows (only an Arabic language Quran is sanctified) - Arabs are the best of peoples - The leader of the ummah must be an Arab from the Quraysh tribe (which is why both al Qaeda and ISIS have very particular leadership rules regarding that) - People ought to adopt Arabic names after embracing Islam - People ought to dress in Arabic garb - Prayers need to be directed towards Mecc
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Satellites are commonly launched by launch service providers. U.S. companies use foreign launchers all the time, if it makes economic sense. [spaceflightnow.com]
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Even more revealing was them launching this probe from Japan, which the last I checked, is not an Arab country. They couldn't find a spot on that vast Emirati desert from where to launch?
So what? Lots of spacefaring nations hire facilities in other countries to launch their missions.
Generally, the location to launch is determined by geography and the desired initial orbit. Launching near the equator towards the east provides a boost from the Earth's rotation, and is often the best choice. But you need to find some place to ditch the boosters. Russian launches from Kazakhstan are not without their environmental impact, as the boosters (containing toxic chemicals) fall on land and impact wild
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I forgot to mention that in order to launch satellites, you need rockets. It's a whole other engineering endeavor to build them and their support infrastructure, so much so that many countries just buy the necessary ride from someone else.
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They built most of it. They have their own engineers and scientists working on ti. They DO have help from mentors and partners from the US though, agreed. That does not nullify the UAE's accomplishments. The next launch will be even more independent. However the day of 100% independence in science from ANY country is gone, even America will never be completely isolated anymore
Don't forget the US got a lot of mentoring from ex-Nazi scientists in our rocketry program. We had Canadian scientists helping.
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That does not nullify the UAE's accomplishments.
It really kind of does. In terms of prestige and respect from the rest of the world this mission is useless even if it does help expand our knowledge of our sister planet. Most other countries made it a point of pride to get into space on their own. Not that I have a problem with them just skipping all that or anything. It's fine. But in terms of respect..hehe nope.
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No country has ever gotten into space on their own, everyone has had international partners. Even the US and the Soviets.
Mars will be close (Score:4, Informative)
Mars will be a comparatively short 38.6m miles (62m km) from Earth
38.6 millimiles? Yes, that's quite close.
(I might jump over there for a picnic...)
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Why that's 10/259ths of a mile, that's 191.23 feet (the French ones, not those weird tiny American feet), also commonly known as 35218022.4 twips, or 2E-15 parsecs.
But really SI units are better and so much easier to read: 621206784000Å
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that's 191.23 feet (the French ones, not those weird tiny American feet)
Hands/feet may be small but POTUS assures us there's nothing wrong in the bedroom department.
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Well, maybe to the moon... https://www.wnycstudios.org/po... [wnycstudios.org]
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United Arab Emirates Confirmed 57.734 +236 Recovered 50.354 Deaths 342
they seem to be doing fine and posess some modicum of reason for some reason , the more mars probes the better but sadly, living in europe i can see who's gonna get left behind on the land claims again
Is it halaal? (Score:1)
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Well, he did split the moon...
This is one of the few occasions when a reply from the goatse guy would actually be on topic, by the way...
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Uh, he wasn't the smartest in astronomy (or science in general), I mean he said that during the event known as Ramadan you need to fast from sunrise to nightfall .. except he didn't know that in the sun doesn't set for months in the arctic circle. Oops.
Re:Is it halaal? (Score:5, Interesting)
To be fair I doubt he had too many followers in scandinavia, russia or greenland back then.
But the problem with religious rules in general is they become fossilised and simply exist for their own sake with the real reason for them being forgotten, deliberately or otherwise. Eg the ban on eating pork made sense in hot southern mediterranean countries where for a start pigs don't do very well anyway and secondly can pass on nasty diseases if they're unwell and the meat isn't cooked properly (though so can chicken, go figure). However nowadays by both religions jews and muslims its done as part of honouring their god rather than any health reason.
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Honestly, haram or no haram, if you're arguing that eating pork is healthy you're either not very bright, or working for a pork lobby.
Bacon is awesome
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Pork in general is tasty, but IMHO bacon is overrated.
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Pork in general is tasty, but IMHO bacon is overrated.
You need to buy better quality bacon
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German bacon is pretty good in quality. Still, bacon is overrated, the only good place for it is split pea soup and even there ham might be a better alternative.
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Its a lot better than beef not only for health but for the enviroment too. But I guess you knew that and you're just a troll.
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Same with halal slaughtering methods, which really should be banned. Well they are in some European countries, but not the UK. Actually we might go halal soon, we need trade deals to keep our meat farmers in business and some of the countries that are interested are demanding we adopt halal.
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I've always wondered what halal bacon tasted like :)
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Same as normal bacon, you can't actually taste the suffering the animal experienced when it was slaughtered.
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Well the halal way certainly seems to be worse, in that it has to be done by a human by hand and the animal left to bleed out. Animals can be stunned but the manual process is more error prone.
I think a lot of halal places just sort of ignore that stuff and say that as long as the person flipping the switch on the machine is a Muslim or from one of the related religions it counts. Problem is you can't know when buying halal meat. If it was guaranteed to be literally just someone standing there blessing cows
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I don't know, I'm no expert.
Same here. I'm sure the "I can tell the difference between a monster cable and a regular speaker wire" people would be able to tell the difference between a "stress free steak" and a "normal" one.
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All I know is British beef is terrible, Irish is pretty good and Japanese Wagyu is the best I have ever tasted.
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Argentine beef is the best I've ever tasted. I can't afford Wagyu. So I wouldn't know about that.
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Fair enough, but I think the GP's point was that "halal bacon" is an oxymoron.
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Actually, standard slaughtering is halal/kosher.
Only brain dead die hard muslims or jews demand killing an animal without knocking it unconsciously before.
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I hate the rules which don't make sense. It's far better to have truly circular reasoning, such as not eating from the tree of knowledge because you're religious, and being religious because you chose to remain ignorant.
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They ate from the tree of knowledge, but still did not know that the tree of eternal life was just the next tree.
Actually it is not called tree of knowledge but "tree of gnostic/cognition".
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Eg the ban on eating pork made sense in hot southern mediterranean countries where for a start pigs don't do very well anyway and secondly can pass on nasty diseases if they're unwell and the meat isn't cooked properly ... However nowadays by both religions jews and muslims its done as part of honouring their god rather than any health reason.
Luckily for me, Jesus came along and said, "Bacon is awesome!!"
Pretty sure I read that somewhere in the New Testament.
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Uh, he wasn't the smartest in astronomy (or science in general), I mean he said that during the event known as Ramadan you need to fast from sunrise to nightfall .. except he didn't know that in the sun doesn't set for months in the arctic circle. Oops.
How many Muslims live above the Arctic Circle even today? Ulamas have been handing out common sense dispensations from religious commandments since shortly after the time of Muhammad himself.
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Lol it was the high ground 2000 years ago and then stopped. They still stone people to death and make women marry their rapists. Don't ever doodle Mohammed accidentally or you're in a world of hurt.
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Lol it was the high ground 2000 years ago and then stopped. They still stone people to death...
There are right-wingers today in the U.S. who think we should reconsider our opposition to stoning people to death. [garynorth.com]. It is Biblical after all.
Dupe (Score:3)
https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
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First I saw it on Slashdot, and it often takes a week or two for major stories to show up here.
Will it stop 5 times a day.. (Score:4, Funny)
... and turn back towards Mecca sending a specially crafted prayer signal?
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Re: Will it stop 5 times a day.. (Score:2)
I guess you are going for +Funny, but AFAIK prayer time is determined by sunrise /set at the prayer's location and equal times in between, so there would be no prayer time. Although maybe eclipses during Mars orbit would need to be handled :-)
Re:Will it stop 5 times a day.. (Score:4, Interesting)
That's something I was curious about anyway. Let's imagine I'm living on Tematagi [wikipedia.org], which is the antipode of Mecca. Do I pray towards the ground? Or anywhere I want?
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Just switch from Judaism to Christianity and you'll be fine.
Or just do the sensible thing and dump the superstition altogether.
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So that's what she meant when she said "eat me"...
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People have adopted politics as religion with fierocity as of late. They are both giant memeplexes designed to gain followers so as to seize power so they can legally force themselves on people, and no longer have to rely on just persuasion, so a vanishingly small handful at the top can live the good life.
There. Now you are truly woke.
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An in this religion as in the old ones, a growing number of people noticed that neither emperor wears any pants.
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Because this one allows cannibalism - body of christ and blood of christ for communion.
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Plus the head honcho can respawn.
But his internet sucks, takes him whole 3 days. Talk about overlong death animations.
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Zombie Apocalypse. Easter Sunday. Spot the similarity.
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Hey, before Easter Jesus was just hangin' out.
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If the alternative is starving to death, a Muslim can eat non-halal. The same goes for Jews and non-kosher.
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That's something I was curious about anyway. Let's imagine I'm living on Tematagi [wikipedia.org], which is the antipode of Mecca. Do I pray towards the ground? Or anywhere I want?
If you're at the antipode of Mecca, then all horizontal directions point towards Mecca on a great-circle. Just like at the North Pole, all directions point to the South Pole.
AFAIK, Muslims don't need to align themselves to the linear direction to Mecca, i.e., towards the ground. So, pray in any direction you want if you're at Tematagi.
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Actually the great circle that goes through one of the poles would be a few miles shorter, so maybe you should face the pole.
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Sorry, not gonna work, because it's VERY bad form to pray with your back towards Mecca, which you'd be at the antipode at the same time.
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Then just take one step forward. Your front will then be closer to Mecca than your back.
Look, IANAM, but I'm pretty sure that most Imams would say it's okay to wing it, as long as you're doing so in good faith. That also goes for making up when "sunset" happens if you're at a latitude where there isn't one.
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Well, it sure is easier to be Muslim in New Zealand than in Finland, considering the date for Ramadan...
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I suspect "winging it" would be acceptable to most imams too. The "good faith" being the issue.
I doubt that every mosque in the world has got the (whatever the Mecca-wards niche is called) correctly aligned, whether it be according to a Mercator projection "straight line", or a great circle. Praying at
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The answer is there right in the Quran, see the translations of Quran 2:115 [quran.com]:
"And to Allah belongs the east and the west. So wherever you turn, there is the Face of Allah. Indeed, Allah is all-Encompassing and Knowing."
So, it does not matter which way one faces in prayer, provided they made an attempt to find out which way ...
Two Mars probes in 24 hours (Score:4, Funny)
UAE strong.
UAC hell (Score:2)
And then, Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC) with hell opening like on Earth as predicted in Doom games. :P
Successful Launch! (Score:3)
Emirates Spacecraft (Score:3)
Getting back to the article though, I think it should only "count" if the country that owns the payload actually builds the payload and the rocket it launches on.
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Almost every country besides US and Russia started with building the payload and then moved on to launch facilities. For most countries, unless they also want to develop missiles developing launch capability is not worth it though having your own satellites is always beneficial.
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Actually, quite possibly you don't. Whatever.
Oh good (Score:1)
Mohammed on Mars. Facing Mecca will be difficult on another planet.
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To be fair to the Emirates, they are one of the Arab countries that have been mending relations w/ Israel. Not sure whether they've lifted their ban on Israelis going to that country, or whether they're establishing diplomatic relations, but they are one of the backers of the Kushner peace plan. Only problem - the Saudis discovered that there are not enough Arab countries willing to go down w/ it, even though the bulk of them are sick of the Palestinians.
Israel's current most lethal enemy is neither th
Cheers for the UAE! (Score:2)
Great to see a history continuing scientific contribution from a Muslim nation An aptly named positive effort for their next generation to look to for inspiration?
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Then again, it is Slashdot. You expect 90% of the comments to be irrelevant bullshit - or at least, I do.
They just bought it (Score:1)
The emulator? (Score:2)
They did needed Amiga Workbench to make the probe work or something?
UAE? (Score:1)
Made in USA, launched by Japan. Some unclear participation by UAE citizens or ex-pats.
The real purpose of this is to give Emiratis a sense of pride and indeed hope, where they might have little at the moment. They very aptly named it "Hope," since it really has no other purpose, "science" notwithstanding.
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A much better way of instilling national pride than going halfway across the world and bombing people because they dont agree with your beliefs.