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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.
Rocket Lab is not just known for its Electron rocket, but also for its ability to produce high-performance spacecraft. With the ESCAPADE mission, the company aims to showcase its capabilities in building spacecraft that can journey throughout the solar system.
The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission, developed in collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley, will study the interaction between solar winds and the Martian atmosphere. The spacecraft, named Blue and Gold, are based on Rocket Lab’s Explorer platform, known for its high delta-v capabilities.
One of the biggest challenges faced by Rocket Lab engineers was designing a spacecraft that can travel from Earth orbit to Mars. The spacecraft are about 70% fuel by mass, enabling them to achieve a velocity change of about 3 kilometers per second, which is quite high for a satellite of this size. The design of the spacecraft was driven by various constraints, with the maximum amount of mass the spacecraft can carry through the Mars orbital insertion maneuver being a key factor.
According to Mandy, these changes in the spacecraft design have a domino effect. With less mass in the primary structure, there is a need for less fuel, resulting in a different tank size, and so on. Engineers strategically placed components that tend to get hot, like the flight computer and radio, on one deck, while components that tend to get cold, like the propulsion system, are placed on another. These changes lead to the need for less power, smaller solar panels, fewer heaters, and various other effects.
The Journey to Mars
After the launch, the spacecraft will spend 11 months traveling to Mars before a critical MOI burn. However, communication during this burn will be impossible due to the sun’s position between Earth and Mars. This will require Rocket Lab engineers to wait approximately three months before sending commands to circularize the spacecraft’s orbit. Subsequently, the spacecraft will gather and transmit scientific data back to Earth for around 11 months.
Mandy did not disclose the exact launch window for the mission, stating that it is determined by Blue Origin. However, he mentioned that the current window offers peak efficiency for the spacecraft’s travel, extending “through several months after the peak.” Missing this window would result in a 26-month delay before the ESCAPADE spacecraft can begin uncovering the mysteries of Mars.
