A pair of Rocket Lab-made spacecraft are about to embark on a two-step journey. The first step is the 55-hour, 2,500-mile stretch from California to the launch site at Cape Canaveral. The second step? Just 11 months and 230 million miles to Mars.
Mission Objective: Studying Mar Atmosphere
The ESCAPADE mission aims to study the interaction between solar winds and the Martian atmosphere. The University of California, Berkeley’s SpacBerkeley’s Laboratory (SSL) developed the scientific payloads for the mission. At the same time, Rocket Lab provided the satellite bus — the platform that will travel through space and host those payloads in orbit around Mars. According to NASA, The mission is set to launch no earlier than October on the first launch of Origin’sigin’s New Glenn rocket.
Rocket Lab’s Dual RoLab’socket and Spacecraft Manufacturer
Mars Rocket Lab is best known for its Electron rocket, which ranks second only to SpaceX’s FalcSpaceX’sarding launch numbers. However, Rocket Lab’s revenue mainly comes from the production and sale of spacecraft components. Rocket Lab wants to demonstrate its ability to make high-performance spacecraft that can travel around the solar system with ESCAPADE.
Proven Track Record: CAPSTONE Mission to the Moon
The company previously proved its capabilities with the satellite bus for NASA’s Cislunar Autonomous PositNASA’s System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) mission to the moon in 2022. That spacecraft took nearly five months to enter lunar orbit. However, reaching Mars is a much longer and historically expensive endeavor.
NASA’s Mars SIMPLEx Program: EmbracinNASA’s and Reducing Costs
In 2019, NASA Mars established the IMPLEx program to fund small spacecraft missions into deep space. Unlike previous missions, which cost NASA over a half billion dollars, the SIMPLEx program set a goal to spend just $55 million per mission, excluding launch costs. ESCAPADE is one of three missions selected under the SIMPLEx program and will likely be the first to launch.
Mars Rocket Lab’s Cost-Effective Solution
Mars While Rocket Lab has not disclosed the amount of the $55 million that went to them, the lead systems engineer for ESCAPADE, Christophe Mandy, mentioned that Rocket Lab was “two orders of magnitude cheaper than anything else.”
Innovative Spacecraft Design
The spacecr” ft, named Blue and Gold, is based on Rocket Lab’s Explorer platform, known for its high Lab’s-v capabilities to support missions of this kind. Designing a spacecraft capable of traveling from Earth orbit to Mars was a significant challenge, resulting in the ESCAPADE spacecraft being about 70% fuel by mass. This design allows the spacecraft to achieve approximately 3 kilometers per second of delta-v, which is very high for a satellite of this size.
Mars Overcoming Challenges: Launch Provider Selection
Another challenge was the late selection of the launch provider. NASA chose New Glenn as the launch vehicle in February 2023, which affected the spacecraft’s design constraints
