NASA’s ESCAPADE Probes Launched to Explore Mars’ Secrets
NASA has officially launched its new mission to Mars with the twin ESCAPADE probes, which took off on November 13, 2023. The launch marked the first mission to the Red Planet in over five years, following the successful deployment of the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter on July 30, 2020. The ESCAPADE probes lifted off aboard Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, although their immediate destination is not Mars, but rather the sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2 (L2), located approximately 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth.
This innovative mission is designed to take advantage of the unique alignment of Earth and Mars for interplanetary travel, which occurs every 26 months. The next opportunity for such a journey will not be until late 2026, necessitating the ESCAPADE probes to spend around 12 months at L2. During this time, they will conduct vital research on space weather before returning to Earth’s vicinity in November 2026 for a gravitational assist that will propel them toward Mars.
Exploration Plans Redefined
The trajectory planned for the ESCAPADE probes is groundbreaking and may alter future approaches to Martian exploration. Jeffrey Parker, a representative from Advanced Space LLC, one of NASA’s partners for this $80 million mission, highlighted the significance of launching to Mars outside of the usual planetary alignment. “Can we launch to Mars when the planets are not aligned? ESCAPADE is paving the way for that,” Parker stated at a conference earlier this year.
The University of California, Berkeley, is also a key partner in this mission, responsible for managing and operating the ESCAPADE probes. Reflecting the university’s colors, the probes have been named Blue and Gold. The journey to Mars from L2 is expected to take approximately 10 months, with the probes arriving in Martian orbit around September 2027.
Once in orbit, Blue and Gold will spend an additional seven months coordinating their paths around Mars. This synchronized orbit is crucial, as it allows the probes to monitor and study Mars’ atmospheric dynamics more effectively. As explained by ESCAPADE principal investigator Robert Lillis from UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, “When we have two spacecraft crossing those regions in quick succession, we can monitor how those regions vary on timescales as short as two minutes and up to 30 minutes.”
Scientific Instruments and Goals
Both probes are equipped with a suite of scientific instruments, including a visible-light and infrared camera system, a magnetometer, an electrostatic analyzer, and a Langmuir probe, which measures plasma properties. Over the course of their mission, Blue and Gold will map Mars’ upper atmosphere and magnetic fields, providing an unprecedented stereo view of the Red Planet’s near-space environment.
The data collected by the ESCAPADE probes will be instrumental in understanding how and when Mars lost its atmosphere, offering key insights that could inform future human exploration and settlement on the planet. While the mission team anticipates a waiting period for data to be processed, they remain optimistic. As Lillis noted, “Space scientists are used to playing the long game.”
The launch of the ESCAPADE probes represents a significant step forward in Mars exploration, setting the stage for a future where missions can be launched with more flexibility, potentially expanding humanity’s reach into our solar system. As the mission progresses, scientists around the world will closely monitor the findings, eagerly awaiting new revelations about our neighboring planet.
