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Two Mars rovers that will fly on Blue Origin’s much-anticipated New Glenn rocket debut have arrived at their launch site in Florida.
The satellite duo, called ESCAPADE (“Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Probes”), is to be launched on top of the tree New Glen no earlier than 13 October from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. They will come in Mars orbit in September 2025, on a NASA mission to study how charged particles come in from the sun interact with and changing the planet’s magnetic environment.
The two coordinated robotic probes could paint a more detailed picture of how Mars’ interaction with the solar wind affects the planet’s outflow. thin atmosphereand how its climate has evolved over time to lose what scientists think was once an abundant reservoir of liquid water on the surface.
On August 18, the two ESCAPADE spacecraft arrived at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility in Titusville, Florida, to prepare for launch. At the facility, which is owned by Lockheed Martin, teams will check various aspects of the satellites in a dedicated clean room, including their electrical circuits and possible leaks in their tanks before making the final assembly.
The spacecraft will be refueled next month, NASA said recently statement.
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“The successful delivery of the spacecraft is a significant milestone and the culmination of more than three years of dedicated teamwork from individuals across the project,” said ESCAPADE Principal Investigator Rob Lillis, University of California, Berkeley, in a NASA statement. “Now, we are excited to embark on this first step of our journey to Mars!”
Both small satellites were built by California-based Rocket Lab and UC Berkeley, which is leading the mission and received the satellites “Blue” and “Gold” after the school’s traditional colors. Each probe weighs under 198 pounds (90 kilograms) and carries three science instruments. The total cost of the mission is less than $80 million, according to the mission website.
The value of the launch contract signed by NASA with Blue Origin is $20 million, SpaceNews reported.
ESCAPADE is among a wave of low-cost, high-risk NASA missions to other planets, which typically require more than a decade of development and exceed $1 billion in costs. “Sending two spacecraft to Mars at a total cost of $80 million is currently unheard of, but current NASA leadership is taking the risk,” Lillis said in a statement. previous press release. “Instead of spending $800 million on a 95% chance of success, can we spend $80 million on an 80% chance? This is what NASA is trying to find out with these missions, and we’re lucky to be one of the guinea pigs.”
The satellites were originally scheduled to launch on the same SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket that would defect to the asteroid Psyche mission in August 2022. removedhowever, a delay in the Psyche mission resulted in a new trajectory that did not support the release of the ESCAPADE on Mars. (Psyche finished up successfully launched in October 2023.) The satellite duo then became the primary wage burden aboard Blue Origin’s first orbital rocket, New Glenis a two-stage heavy lift rocket named after a NASA astronaut John Glennwho in 1962 was the first American to circle the Earth.
New Glenn is 322 feet (98 meters) tall, about the height of a 30-story building, and is capable of launching about 45 metric tons into low Earth orbit. Its first flight will come after more than ten years of development Blue Originfounded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezosand above three years later than the company expected.
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When the ESCAPADE satellites reach Mars in September 2025, “the mission team will need several months to configure their orbits for science observations,” NASA said in the recent news release. Their orbits will be adjusted over several months so that by early 2026 they will be following each other in a “string of pearls” formation, which will allow them to collect data on Mars’ rapidly changing orbital response. solar wind.
They will later break into different orbits so they can see the solar wind and Mars’ upper atmosphere in real time, according to the space agency. The science mission is designed to last 11 months in Mars orbit, until March 2027.
Meanwhile, the New Glenn first stage is expected to return to Earth shortly after liftoff, indicating its reusability. There is Blue Origin said that the first stage will operate like a commercial airliner but with cleaner fuel, resulting in less waste and lower launch costs.
In recent weeks, parts of other New Glenn rockets scheduled for future flights have been damaged, Bloomberg reported on 21 August. In one incident, the top of Blue Origin’s second New Glenn rocket cracked “like a crushed coke can,” in part because of an error by factory workers who moved the part into a cooled storage hangar but did not monitor it. the hardware afterwards. In the second incident, part of the third New Glenn rocket failed during a stress test and exploded inside a building.
No injuries were reported in either incident, according to Bloomberg, which first broke the news of the recent failures. The issues did not affect New Glenn’s planned launch in October, a Blue Origin spokesman said Alan Boyle of GeekWire.
