00:00We're pretty ready for the Mars orbit insertion, I would say, and we're confident about it.
00:13Now my role is to track where the satellite is at all times in order to basically know when to
00:19do the maneuvers and when to basically slow down in order to get captured by Mars.
00:26The Mars orbit insertion, basically we have to slow down the speed of the spacecraft to a speed
00:32in which we can get captured by the Martian atmosphere. So we'll be burning about half a ton
00:37of fuel for 28-29 minutes just to slow down in order to get captured by Mars. It's a very crucial
00:45maneuver for us, of course. It's very important for us to be like pretty accurate with it because
00:50slowing down the spacecraft, if we don't slow it enough, we're not going to get captured by
00:55the Martian gravity and basically we're going to escape into an orbit that's going to orbit the
01:00Sun and we won't be able to get back into Mars until two years later. However, if we burn too
01:06much then we risk crashing into Mars. We found the right balance in order to do the maneuver
01:12and basically have a safe margin both ways. We've been ready for this maneuver. We have all of the
01:17contingency plans and everything in place so we're pretty happy with the way our design is. Hopefully
01:22it's going to go fine. Success is really within our grasps for this mission. Although the failure
01:29rate is 50% for Martian missions, but so far what we've seen we're on the right path.
01:36I study the impact of varying atmospheric conditions to the lower atmosphere on derived
01:42thermophysical properties on the Martian surface. Thermophysical properties are properties that
01:47affect the energy budget. So the ultimate goal is to use diurnal data from EXI and EMIRS to
01:53investigate this impact. So after receiving the scientific data, the science team works on
01:58developing the scientific models and algorithms for the scientific data processing and interpretations.
02:05And after receiving the science data, the science team will be working on calibrating, verifying,
02:11and analyzing this data. The significance of this data is basically we will have diurnal coverage
02:16which hasn't been found before or investigated before by previous missions. So having this
02:24day-to-day, day-to-night coverage, seasonal coverage, global coverage, gives us an advantage of
02:31knowing what's happening on Mars. History of Mars, we know that it was a wet environment,
02:38but nowadays we know that it's a dry environment. So we needed to understand what's happening on
02:43Mars. Having this data, especially from the UAE, can inspire the youth to go into the science field
02:50since it's a scientific mission. And it's actually one of the programmatic objectives is to enhance
02:56the knowledge of the scientific community and the engineering community as well in the UAE and to
03:02build those capabilities in the UAE. FLASAT is an important part of this mission. It has been used
03:07prior to launch to simulate and understand the design of the spacecraft and how it could function
03:14to meet our objectives. After launch even, it became more important where we are through our
03:19seven months of transition from Earth to Mars. There have been several activities on board the
03:24spacecraft that has been simulated on FLASAT to understand how the spacecraft is going to work,
03:28what functionality or capability of the spacecraft would be reached within this environment, the deep
03:35space environment, since we don't understand that completely without even having components out
03:39there. As we approach MOI, Mars Orbit Insertion, FLASAT even became more important where we need to
03:45precisely understand how the spacecraft is going to function and be captured by Mars. During this
03:49period, FLASAT has been used to test several activities or several events of the MOI
03:54to understand how the spacecraft is going to respond to things in an unexpected way, where we
04:00tried turning off components or understand what failures could happen. Since MOI is very critical,
04:06we have a 30 minutes window to burn and be captured by Mars Orbit. It's very hard to measure confidence
04:12or success rate in this matter, but we built something that we're confident in. We ran
04:19several tests, hundreds, thousands of tests, whether that's analysis or even simulation on FLASAT.
04:25The spacecraft team has monitored the spacecraft throughout this period and
04:30we believe that we have the confidence into performing a successful Mars Orbit Insertion.
Comments