An illustration depicts two Photon spacecraft approaching Mars for the ESCAPADE mission. NASA picked Blue Origin to launch ESCAPADE, which will send a spacecraft to Mars to study the planet’s magnetosphere. Photo courtesy of Rocket Lab
NASA officials say its Mars-bound ESCAPADE spacecraft is back in Florida and is being prepped for its scheduled launch this fall.
NASA’s twin spacecrafts of its Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers mission, known as ESCAPADE, returned from California to Florida last Tuesday after NASA halted its initial attempted launch last year, the U.S. space agency announced Monday.
ESCAPADE arrived in Titusville at Florida’s Astrotech Space Operations facility from California at NASA’s rocket lab production complex in Long Beach.
NASA in 2023 commissioned the private space launch company Blue Origin to launch a government-sanctioned mission to study the magnetosphere of Mars.
The two crafts are destined to orbit Mars part of NASA’s growing arsenal constructed to expand life in space amid recent discoveries of scientific life on Mars.
NASA scientists say that on Mars it will study its Martian magnetic field, how it interacts with space weather and “how this interaction drives the planet’s atmospheric escape.”
According to NASA, data gained from the ESCAPADE spacecraft will enable scientists to “better protect” future human and robotic missions to the Red Planet.
On Monday, space officials at NASA added that its Rocket Lab engineers are expected to complete inspections and functional tests in its Astrotech cleanroom prior to the load of its propellant and other integration tasks as launch day nears.
Meanwhile, ESCAPADE’s Mars launch is scheduled for no earlier than this fall.
