The probe launched in July 2020 from Japan, on top of a tall rocket. It then spent seven months travelling through the empty dark between Earth and Mars, going about 121,000 km/h. To put that in perspective, that's roughly New York to London in two minutes.
On 9 February 2021, after such a long journey, the probe had to fire its engines for exactly 27 minutes to slow down enough to be caught by Mars's gravity. If it had been even slightly wrong, the probe would have shot past the planet and into deep space. It worked first time.
Hope is now circling Mars, looking down at the whole planet. Its main job is to watch the Martian weather - the dust storms, the thin clouds, how the temperature changes between day and night. It is the first spacecraft ever to study Martian weather across the whole planet at the same time.
The UAE chose 2021 for arrival on purpose: it was the 50th birthday of the country itself. The mission was led by a team in their thirties, many of them women. The lead scientist, Sarah Al Amiri, was 34 years old when the probe arrived at Mars.