It’s the Summer of Mars, and in between the larger space agencies of the United States and China vying to put the next rover on the surface, a small, upstart space agency in the United Arab Emirates is also looking to make their mark. Team members Mohsen Al Awadhi, Hessa Rashid Al Matroushi and Ayesha Al Sharafi from the UAE’s Mars Hope mission join Jake to talk about their successful launch and what they hope this mission will say to the people of the UAE and the world.

Mars Hope

• Mars Hope launches Successfully

Follow Mars Hope

• Mars Hope Twitter (@HopeMarsMission)
• Ayesha Twitter (@ayesha_sharafi)
• Hessa Twitter (@HR_Almatroushi)
• Mohsen Twitter (@MohsenAlAwadhi)

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• Website (www.wemartians.com)
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• Twitter (@we_martians) 
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Announcing the first WeMartians Livestream Event for Perseverance

Be sure to join us on July 30th at 7:10AM EDT (T-40 minutes before launch). Co-host Tanya Harrison and I will be welcoming three amazing guests to talk about the NASA Perseverance launch, from science to engineering and more.

You can watch it on the Off-Nominal YouTube channel (subscribe to get the notification we’re live!).

We’ve Made Space Better

Here at Off-Nominal, we’ve been following the demonstrations against racial inequality and police violence in the United States, Canada, and around the world with concern. These events have highlighted deep problems with how we treat each other in many domains, and space exploration is not exempt.

While we have been processing this in real-time, it has become obvious that we must do our part and use our platform to speak up against these inequalities and take action to stop them. We have engaged with our Discord community to come up with a plan. The first part of this plan is to raise money for two great organizations listed above.

Thanks to two anonymous listeners and our friend Tim Dodd the Everyday Astronaut, we’ve been able to match $11,000 of listener donations with twice that again. All in, we’ve raised nearly $35,000 for the Banneker Institute and Black Girls Code.

Read more about the results here.

Thank you for helping us work together to make space better.