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EI2GYB > ASTRO 06.09.21 10:26l 78 Lines 4238 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 14149_EI2GYB
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Subj: A pair of spacecraft will head to Mars in 2024
Path: IZ3LSV<IR1UAW<IW2OHX<UA6ADV<I0OJJ<GB7CIP<EI2GYB
Sent: 210906/0923Z @:EI2GYB.DGL.IRL.EURO #:14149 BPQ6.0.22
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A pair of spacecraft will head to Mars in 2024
as the ESCAPADE mission, to study the Martian space weather environment.
An exciting new Mars mission will seek to answer questions about the Martian
atmosphere and the local solar wind environment, in real time.
NASA announced the selection of two spacecraft named "Blue" and "Gold" that
will launch in the 2024 Mars window, for arrival at the Red Planet in 2026. The
overall mission is named the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics
Explorers (ESCAPADE) and is led by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the
University of California, Berkeley.
Costing only $80 million, ESCAPADE is part of a NASA initiative to produce
low-cost, quick-to-assemble interplanetary missions, called the Small
Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program. For
comparison, the development phase of NASA's MAVEN spacecraft cost $367 million.
"ESCAPADE and two other NASA missions recently approved are experiments to see
whether advances in the space industry over the last five to 10 years can
translate to a much better bang for the buck in terms of science per dollar,"
says Robert Lillis (University of California, Berkeley) in a recent press
release. "Sending two spacecraft to Mars for the total cost of $80 million is
just unheard of, but current NASA leadership is taking the risk."
Mars in Stereo
Once in space, Blue and Gold will separate and cruise in tandem to Mars for
orbital insertion. Orbiting on opposing sides of the Red Planet, the two craft
will provide the first simultaneous stereo picture of how the solar wind
interacts with the planet's upper atmosphere. Science collected by ESCAPADE
could paint a more detailed picture of how Mars lost much of its atmosphere to
the solar wind early in its history. Plus, studies of the Martian ionosphere
will characterize how it could interfere with future radio communications from
the planet's surface.
ESCAPADE will launch on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket, and the two spacecraft
will use a pair of Photon satellite buses sporting a more powerful HyperCurie
motor to head to Mars. Rocket Lab has been carrying out successful launches
from the company's Mahia Launch Complex One in New Zealand and is looking to
start launching rockets from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the Virginia
coast late this year. Rocket Lab has other lunar and planetary ambitions in
addition to ESCAPADE, including the launch of NASA's CAPSTONE pathfinder
mission in late 2021 for the crewed Artemis Lunar Gateway orbiter set for late
2024, and a possible mission headed to Venus in 2023.
To date, Rocket Lab has successfully flown the Photon satellite bus based on
the Electron upper kick-stage motor on three test flights in 2020 and 2021.
CAPSTONE will be the first operational flight for Photon.
If successful, ESCAPADE could pave the way for other quick, low-cost missions.
Other selected SIMPLEx missions that have passed Key Decision Point-C (KDP-C)
include Janus, a binary asteroid reconnaissance mission that will fly with
NASA's flagship Psyche mission in 2022, and the Lunar Trailblazer mission which
will directly map water on the lunar surface. An original plan called for
ESCAPADE to fly on the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch along with the Psyche mission.
Congrats to the ESCAPADE team on the selection . . . it will be exciting to see
the mission head to Mars in 2024.
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