Hope Probe Enters Orbit around Mars
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hope-probe-enters-orbit-around-mars/
After a nail-biting 27 minutes, the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) first-ever interplanetary mission has successfully reached orbit around Mars.
The spacecraft, dubbed Hope, launched July 19, 2020, atop a Japanese H-IIA rocket, then spent seven months trekking to the Red Planet. Today (Feb. 9), Hope needed to fire its thrusters for nearly half an hour straight to slow down enough to slip into orbit around the Red Planet, from 75,000 mph to 11,000 mph (121,000 kph to 18,000 kph). Mission personnel on the ground could only watch what happened and hope for the best.