A pair of NASA spacecraft eventually destined for Mars will study how the Sun affects its magnetic environment. The mission will also help the agency prepare for future human exploration of Mars.
NASA's ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorer) spacecraft launched at 3:55 pm EST Thursday aboard Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
“Congratulations to Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, UC Berkeley and all of our partners on the successful launch of ESCAPADE. This heliophysics mission will help reveal how Mars became a desert planet and how solar eruptions impact the Martian surface,” said Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. “Each New Glenn launch provides data that will be needed when we launch MK-1 through Artemis. All of this information will be critical to protecting future NASA explorers and invaluable as we evaluate how to realize President Trump's vision of installing the Stars and Stripes on Mars.”
The twin spacecraft, built by Rocket Lab, will explore how a never-ending stream of million-mile-per-hour particles from the Sun, known as the solar wind, gradually destroyed much of the Martian atmosphere, causing the planet to cool and its surface waters to evaporate. The mission is led by the University of California, Berkeley.
Ground controllers for the ESCAPADE mission established contact with both spacecraft by 10:35 p.m. EST.
“The ESCAPADE mission is part of our strategy to understand the past and present of Mars so we can safely send the first astronauts there,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Understanding Martian space weather is a top priority for future missions as it helps us protect systems, robots and, most importantly, people in extreme environments.”
New Glenn also hosted a demonstration of space communications technology from Viasat Inc., supporting NASA's efforts to commercialize next-generation satellite relay services for science missions. Agency funded Communication Services ProjectDuring the demonstration, launch telemetry data was transmitted from the rocket's second stage to an operations center on Earth via Viasat's geostationary satellite network.
New routes
Recent solar activity that has caused widespread auroras on Earth has caused a small startup delay prevent the negative impact of solar storms on the commissioning of spacecraft after launch. When ESCAPADE arrives on Mars, it will study the modern effects of solar wind and solar storms on the Red Planet in real time. This will provide insight into Martian space weather and help NASA better understand what conditions astronauts will encounter when they reach Mars.
“The ESCAPADE spacecraft is now about to embark on a unique journey to Mars that no other mission has ever traversed,” said Alan Zaid, ESCAPADE program manager at NASA Headquarters.
Instead of heading straight to Mars, the twin spacecraft will first head to a place in space a million miles from Earth called Lagrange Point 2. Earth and Mars are currently on opposite sides of the Sun, making travel from one planet to the other difficult. In November 2026, as Earth and Mars approach each other in their orbits, the ESCAPADE spacecraft will return to Earth and use Earth's gravity to head toward Mars.
In the past, Mars missions waited for launch for a short period of time when Earth and Mars aligned, which happens about every two years. However, given the type of trajectory that ESCAPADE uses, future missions could launch at almost any time and wait in space, queuing up for interplanetary departure, until the two planets take their positions.
This original “close to Earth” or “slow” orbit will also make ESCAPADE the first mission ever to pass through the distant region of Earth's magnetotail, the part of our planet's magnetic field that is stretched away from the Sun by the solar wind.
Exploring Mars in stereo
After a 10-month cruise, ESCAPADE is expected to arrive on Mars in September 2027, becoming the first coordinated two-spacecraft mission to orbit another planet.
Over the course of several months, the two spacecraft will line up in their initial science structure, in which the twin spacecraft will follow each other along the same “string of pearls” orbit, rapidly passing through the same areas to study for the first time how space weather patterns change on short time scales. This scientific campaign will begin in June 2028.
Six months later, both spacecraft will move to different orbits, with one moving further away from Mars and the other staying closer to it. This second education is planned to last five months. The goal of this second formation is to simultaneously study the solar wind and the upper atmosphere of Mars, allowing scientists to study how the planet responds to the solar wind in real time.
ESCAPADE will also provide more information about Mars' ionosphere, the part of the upper atmosphere that future astronauts will rely on to send radio and navigation signals around the planet.
The ESCAPADE mission is funded by NASA's Heliophysics Division and is part of NASA's Small Innovation Missions program for planetary exploration. The mission is supported by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Advanced Space. NASA's Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, secured launch services from Blue Origin as part of a venture contract to acquire Dedicated and Rideshare.
To learn more about ESCAPADE's mission, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/escapade/
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Interrante Abbey
Headquarters, Washington
301-201-0124
[email protected]
Lijay Lockhart
Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
321-747-8310
[email protected]
