NASA and Blue Origin Launch Pair of Mars Monitoring Satellites

This Thursday, Blue Origin successfully launched a pair of NASA spacecraft atop a New Glenn rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The two spacecraft will study Mars‘ magnetic field and how it’s impacted by the Sun and solar wind. NASA says the results of the study will be paramount in planning future manned missions to Mars.
“Congratulations to Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, UC Berkeley, and all our partners on the successful launch of ESCAPADE,” acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy said in a statement. “This heliophysics mission will help reveal how Mars became a desert planet, and how solar eruptions affect the Martian surface.”
“Every launch of New Glenn provides data that will be essential when we launch MK-1 through Artemis,” Duffy continued. “All this information will be critical to protect future NASA explorers and invaluable as we evaluate how to deliver on President Trump’s vision of planting the Stars and Stripes on Mars.”
The NASA spacecraft, developed by Electron rocket manufacturer Rocket Lab, will investigate how solar wind has stripped away Mars’ atmosphere over millennia, causing the planet to cool and its water to evaporate. The two spacecraft will have a very close orbit to one another, with one trailing the other on a highly elongated orbit. This lets them track rapid changes in the Martian atmosphere caused by the solar wind.
A secondary orbit will allow the spacecraft to study the solar wind and Mars’ upper atmosphere simultaneously, allowing (again) for the in-depth tracking of correlations between the wind and changes to Mars’ atmosphere. A more detailed understanding of Mars’ atmosphere and ionosphere will make it easier to develop and ultimately deploy communications equipment for future Mars astronauts.
The spacecraft will first head to the Lagrange point 2, pausing for a while, before beginning a 10-month journey to arrive at the red planet in September 2027. The first science gathering will begin in June 2028.
The New Glenn rocket launch was also a success for all involved. As well as successfully boosting the payloads on their Mars-bound trajectory, the first stage booster rocket landed successfully on a floating platform in the Atlantic: a first for New Glenn and for Blue Origin.
It is now poised to offer a competitive launch vehicle to SpaceX’s Falcon 9, with roughly double the payload capacity and only moderately more expensive build price. With further refinement, New Glenn could act as a next-generation reusable space craft that could eclipse the Falcon 9 in due course.
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