NASA's 2 ESCAPADE Probes Fire 9-Minute Earth Slingshots Toward Mars
Updated
Updated · Universe Today · Nov 6
NASA's 2 ESCAPADE Probes Fire 9-Minute Earth Slingshots Toward Mars
3 articles · Updated · Universe Today · Nov 6
Summary
ESCAPADE's twin spacecraft will skim 965 to 1,770 kilometers above Earth on Nov. 7 and Nov. 9, using powered flybys to depart for Mars after waiting out a missed launch window.
Those trans-Mars injection burns will last about 9 minutes and lift each probe's speed from roughly 10.14 km/s to 10.78 km/s, with Earth's gravity adding the rest of the boost.
At Mars, Red and Blue will become the first pair to fly in formation there, measuring how solar wind interacts with crustal magnetic fields tied to the planet's lost global magnetosphere.
The two-spacecraft design lets NASA separate rapid changes in space weather from changes caused by position; after a 6-month 'String of Pearls' phase, they split to about 7,000 km and 10,000 km orbits.
The mission targets a central Mars mystery: how a once thicker atmosphere was stripped away, helping explain the planet's shift from potentially warm and wet to cold and thin-aired.
Why did NASA use a first-of-its-kind powered Earth flyby to rescue ESCAPADE’s Mars mission, and what can the twin probes reveal about how Mars lost its air?
If Mars can lose its atmosphere in fast, bursty space-weather events, could ESCAPADE reshape how scientists judge habitability on unshielded worlds beyond our solar system?
Can two small spacecraft flying a “String of Pearls” around Mars finally show how magnetic reconnection and solar wind strip away a once-habitable planet’s atmosphere?