"We're entering a very critical phase," said project director, Omran Sharaf. "It's a phase that basically defines whether we reach Mars, or not; and whether we'll be able to conduct our science, or not.

"If we go too slow, we crash on Mars; if we go too fast, we skip Mars," he told BBC News.

The Emirates Mars Mission “Hope Probe” is tasked to provide the first ever complete picture of the Martian atmosphere, with an infrared spectrometer, ultraviolet spectrometer, and exploration imager for high-resolution photos all on board the craft.

The infrared spectrometer measures the global distribution of dust, ice clouds, water vapours, and temperature profiles, while ultraviolet information is used to measure the abundance and variability of carbon monoxide and oxygen in the thermosphere.

The Emirates Mars Mission has cost $200m (£155.8m), according to minister for advanced sciences Sarah Amiri.

Visitors arriving at UAE airports will receive a "Martian Ink" stamp on their passports, made from volcanic basalt rocks which give Mars its red hue.

A message on the stamp reads: "You’ve arrived in the Emirates. The Emirates is arriving at Mars on 09.02.2021."

The rocks were collected from the Al Hajar Mountains and Sharjah’s Mleiha Desert by experts and gemologists, according to the Emirates News Agency.

"On 20th July, 2020, the world watched in excitement as Emirates Mars Mission’s Hope Probe blasted off towards Mars. Now, seven months later on 9th February, 2021, the Hope Probe is set to arrive to the Red Planet’s orbit - a major milestone for the UAE and for the Arab world that embodies hope, and conveys the ambition and motivation of the region’s people in overcoming the most pressing challenges to realise their dreams," Khaled Al Shehhi, Executive Director of Production and Digital Communication Sector at the UAE Government Media Office, said.

"Any image we got of Mars would be iconic but I just can't imagine what it's going to feel like to get that first full-disk image of Mars, once we're in orbit," Sarah Al Amiri, the Emirati minister of state for advanced technology and chair of the UAE Space Agency, told the BBC.

"And for me also, it's getting that science data down and having our science team start analysing it and finding artefacts that haven't been discovered before."

The most vital part of the Hope probe's mission is the half-hour window when it approaches Mars, which is just as difficult as a successful launch itself.

Almost half of the spacecraft's fuel will be needed to slow it down, as it drops from more than 75,185 miles per hour to 11,184 miles per hour, CNN reports.

"Less than half of the spacecraft that have been sent to Mars have actually made it successfully," said Pete Withnell, program manager for the mission at the University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

"But this is a highly practiced, highly simulated and highly analyzed event. I cannot imagine being better prepared than we are right now."