The United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Hope spacecraft, which is on its way to Mars to study the planet’s climate and weather conditions, has caught a first glimpse of the red planet.

UAE’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum confirmed the news on Twitter and shared an image captured by the Hope spacecraft’s Star Tracker. 

The tweet reads, “The Hope probe is officially 100 million km into its journey to the Red Planet. Mars, as demonstrated in the image captured by the probe’s Star Tracker, is ahead of us, leaving Saturn and Jupiter behind. The Hope probe is expected to arrive at Mars in February 2021.”

The Emirates Mars Mission ‘Hope’ will be the first probe to provide a complete picture of the Martian atmosphere and its layers when it reaches the red planet’s orbit in 2021. It will help answer questions about the global Martian atmosphere and the loss of hydrogen and oxygen gases into space over the span of one Martian year.

Once this satellite gets to Mars, it is expected to provide fresh insights on the workings of the planet’s atmosphere.

Mars has captured the human imagination for centuries. Apart from the UAE, two other countries – China and the United States also launched a mission to the red planet in July.