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Mars-bound payload arrives in Florida

Mars-bound payload arrives in Florida

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Rocket Lab has completed two spacecraft for NASA’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars.

The twin probes, nicknamed Blue and Gold, were shipped from Rocket Lab’s factory in Long Beach, California, and arrived at a clean room facility near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida over the weekend. Technicians will now perform final checkups and load hydrazine fuel into both spacecraft, each weighing a little more than half a ton.

If ready, the probes will be connected to the rocket’s launch adapter, encapsulated inside the payload fairing, and mounted on top of the rocket. The ESCAPADE mission must launch between late September and mid-October to take advantage of a planetary alignment between Earth and Mars that only occurs once every 26 months. NASA awarded a $20 million contract to a space company to launch the mission, confirming last November that it will fly on the inaugural flight of a new rocket with a $79 million price tag.

The launch period opens on September 29.

Rob Lillis, the mission’s lead scientist from the University of California Berkeley’s Space Science Laboratory, said, “There’s a whole bunch of checking and tests to make sure everything’s OK, and then we move into fueling, and then we integrate with the launch vehicle. So it’s a big milestone.

There have been some challenges along the way. This wasn’t easy to make happen on this schedule and for this cost. So we’re very happy to be where we are.”

However, there is still much to accomplish in the next couple of months if the rocket is to be ready to send the ESCAPADE mission to Mars this year.

The rocket has not yet fully exercised during a launch countdown, pumped a full load of cryogenic propellants, or test-fired a full complement of first and second stage engines.

Mars mission readies for final prep

These activities typically occur months before the first launch of a large new orbital-class rocket.

Earlier this year, a full-scale, 320-foot-tall rocket was raised on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and loaded with liquid nitrogen, a cryogenic substitute for the methane and liquid hydrogen fuel it will burn in flight. The aerospace community eagerly awaits the upcoming milestones as the team races against the clock to ensure a successful Mars mission within the designated launch window. The twin ESCAPADE spacecraft will not be sent directly to Mars but will instead be placed into an extended Earth orbit, from which they will use their own thrusters to head towards the Red Planet.

They will arrive at Mars and perform the critical Mars orbit insertion burn about 11 months after launch. Each spacecraft, named Blue and Gold after the colors of the University of California, Berkeley, which will run the mission, weighs 524 kilograms, with the science payload accounting for just eight kilograms. Propellant makes up 70% of the spacecraft’s mass.

Christophe Mandy, lead systems engineer, said, “Our design ethos is to have uncompromising efficiency.”

The development of ESCAPADE was relatively quick, completed in three and a half years, whereas the typical timeline for a Mars mission is a decade. This experience is being incorporated into current projects for several other satellite missions. The ESCAPADE mission aims to study the interactions between the solar wind and the Martian atmosphere using a suite of three main science instruments: the EMAG (Escapade MAGnetometer), EESA (Escapade ElectroStatic Analyzers), and ELP (Escapade Langmuir Probe).

Learning more about these effects will help scientists better understand how the Martian atmosphere evolved over time to become uninhabitable and incapable of sustaining liquid water. Once the spacecraft complete their journey to Florida, they will undergo final preparations before their historic launch to Mars. This mission will provide valuable insights into the Martian atmosphere and its interaction with solar winds, continuing the scientific exploration initiated by previous missions and furthering our understanding of our neighboring planet.

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