ESCAPADE Mars Mission on Track for Fall 2024 Launch
The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission to Mars, a NASA smallsat developed by the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, is set to launch this fall of 2024. It consists of two identical smallsats, named Blue and Gold, that will study Mars’ magnetosphere and its interaction with the solar wind. […]
NASA will launch a Mars mission on Blue Origin’s first New Glenn rocket
NASA is aware of the risk of launching a real science mission on the first flight of a new rocket. But this mission, known by the acronym ESCAPADE, is relatively low cost. The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers mission has a budget of approximately $79 million, significantly less than any mission NASA has sent to Mars in recent history.
SSL will have a booth at AGU
For the first time, SSL will have its own booth at the Fall American Geophysical Union (AGU) Meeting, from Monday, December 11, through Thursday, December 14, at the Moscone Center. AGU is expected to have more than 25,000 attendees from over one hundred countries and the theme is Wide Open Science. SSL scientists will be […]
Business Wire: Rocket Lab Integrating Twin Spacecraft for Mission to Mars for NASA
LONG BEACH, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB) (“Rocket Lab” or “the Company”), a global leader in launch services and space systems, today announced that the two spacecraft the Company is building for NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission have entered the system integration phase in preparation for a planned […]
Precision instruments aid KPF exoplanet search
SSL’s Kodi Rider is featured in an April 26 article by R&D World in his role as project manager of the Keck Planet Finder. KPF is a precision optical spectrometer located at Keck Observatory in Hawaii that searches for Earth-like planets of a particular size and mass—astronomers have confirmed more than 5,000 such planets orbiting […]
MAVEN Fact Sheet
The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, launched in November 2013, will be the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere.
EOA Fact Sheet
The Enceladus Organic Analyzer (EOA) is a novel microchip-based technology enabling analysis of organic molecules in extraterrestrial environments such as that of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
ESCAPADE Fact Sheet
ESCAPADE is a twin-spacecraft Class D mission dedicated to studying the transfer of solar wind energy and momentum through Mars’ unique hybrid magnetosphere
