Why in the News?
NASA launched the ESCAPADE mission aboard the New Glenn rocket developed by Blue Origin.
About ESCAPADE Mission:
- Mission Overview: ESCAPADE is a NASA Mars mission consisting of two identical orbiters (Blue and Gold) designed to study how the solar wind interacts with the Martian atmosphere and magnetosphere.
- Launch: Launched aboard Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, marking a major step for commercial heavy-lift launches.
- Programme: Part of NASA’s SIMPLEx programme, which focuses on low-cost, small planetary missions using compact spacecraft.
- Science Goal: To understand how Mars lost its ancient thick atmosphere by measuring plasma, magnetic fields, and ion escape processes driven by the solar wind.
- Trajectory: Uses an innovative path via the Earth–Sun L2 point, loitering for nearly a year before heading to Mars due to an imperfect launch-window alignment; arrival expected in 2027.
Key Features of ESCAPADE:
- Twin–Spacecraft Design: Two orbiters operate together to take simultaneous measurements, allowing scientists to separate time-varying vs space-varying phenomena around Mars.
- Hybrid Magnetosphere Focus: Mars lacks a global magnetic field but has patchy crustal magnetisation; ESCAPADE will map how these regions interact with solar-wind plasma and how ions escape into space.
- Low-Cost Architecture: Built on Rocket Lab’s Photon spacecraft bus, making ESCAPADE a model for frequent, affordable interplanetary missions (~200–500 kg class).
- Advanced Instruments:
- EMAG (magnetometer) to measure magnetic fields.
- EESA (electrostatic analyzer) to analyse ions and electrons.
- ELP (Langmuir probe) to study plasma density and temperature.
- Innovative Mission Timeline:
- One year at Earth–Sun L2.
- Transfer to Mars in 2027.
- Science operations begin after Mars-orbit insertion.
- Science Operations:
- String-of-pearls formation: both orbiters on the same orbit, separated by minutes.
- Divergent orbits: spacecraft split to sample different regions of Mars’s space environment.
- Commercial Enabling: Demonstrates the role of commercial heavy rockets like New Glenn in future deep-space missions.
| [UPSC 2018] What is the purpose of the US Space Agency’s Themis Mission, which was recently in the news?
Options: (a) To study the possibility of life on Mars (b) To study the satellites of Saturn (c) To study the colorful display of high latitude skies* (d) To build a space laboratory to study stellar explosions |
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