Mars presents a compelling puzzle: once a potentially habitable world with liquid water and a thicker atmosphere, it’s now a cold, barren desert. NASA’s upcoming ESCAPADE mission (short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) aims to shed light on this transformation by investigating how the Red Planet lost its atmosphere — a key question for understanding its past and future potential for life.
A Double Dose of Martian Observation
Scheduled to launch this weekend aboard Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, ESCAPADE will send two identical satellites, nicknamed Blue and Gold, into orbit around Mars. This marks NASA’s first dual-satellite mission to another planet and is expected to cost $80 million. The primary goal is to create a three-dimensional view of how the solar wind – a constant stream of charged particles from the sun – interacts with and gradually strips away the Martian atmosphere.
The Science Behind the Mission
“Understanding how the solar wind drives atmospheric escape is a critical piece of the puzzle in unraveling the climate evolution of Mars,” explains Robert Lillis, principal investigator for ESCAPADE and associate director for planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory. The dual-satellite approach provides a “stereo perspective,” allowing scientists to observe and compare data from two different vantage points simultaneously.
From Wet World to Frozen Desert: A History of Loss
Geological evidence, including ancient riverbeds and water-formed minerals, indicates that Mars once supported liquid water – meaning it also possessed a thicker atmosphere. Roughly 4 billion years ago, however, Mars lost its global magnetic field, an invisible shield that protects planets from solar radiation. Without this protection, the solar wind slowly eroded the atmosphere, reducing it to a mere fraction of its former density.
Why Two Satellites Are Better Than One
Previous missions like NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor, MAVEN, and the Emirates Mars Mission Hope have revealed the lack of a global magnetic field on Mars, but have also detected patchy, localized magnetic “bubbles” embedded in the crust. Having only one spacecraft in orbit at a time has restricted researchers to observing these regions separately, often hours apart.
ESCAPADE overcomes this limitation by enabling scientists to “monitor how those regions vary on timescales as short as two minutes and up to 30 minutes,” Lillis explains. This unprecedented level of detail will allow for a far more comprehensive understanding of the dynamic system responsible for atmospheric loss.
The Mission Plan: A Phased Approach
Following their arrival in September 2027, the satellites will spend about seven months fine-tuning their orbits before flying in tandem, resembling “a pair of pearls on a string,” at an altitude of just 100 miles (160 kilometers). After six months of coordinated observations, they will separate and enter different orbits for another five months. This will enable the creation of a 3D map detailing the flow of energy and matter between Mars and the solar wind.
Instruments for Understanding
Over roughly 11 months of scientific operations, ESCAPADE will address three key questions: the shape of Mars’ magnetic bubbles, the interaction of solar energy with them, and the resulting impact on particle flow within the atmosphere. Each probe, roughly the size of a copy machine, carries a suite of interconnected instruments, including:
- Electrostatic analyzers (UC Berkeley) will identify and measure charged particles escaping from Mars.
- A magnetometer (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center) will track magnetic field strength and direction.
- Plasma sensors (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University) will analyze plasma properties.
- Student-built cameras (Northern Arizona University) will capture images of Mars, potentially revealing glimpses of mysterious green auroras.
A Novel Route to Mars
ESCAPADE utilizes a unique route to Mars, first heading toward a Lagrange point – a gravitational “sweet spot” between Earth and the sun – for approximately a year before slingshotting toward the Red Planet in 2026. This longer, more flexible approach can reduce reliance on the narrow, bi-annual launch windows for Mars missions.
Broader Implications for Exploration and Beyond
Understanding the interaction of solar radiation with Mars’ ionosphere – the upper layer of its atmosphere – is essential for future human exploration. Radio waves can reflect off the ionosphere on Mars, enabling communication beyond the horizon. Furthermore, the mission’s findings may provide clues regarding the potential existence of subsurface water, as suggested by recent seismic data from NASA’s InSight lander, and support future human settlements.
“It will definitely be a challenge to establish a human settlement on Mars,” Lillis concludes. “But, you know, humans are tenacious, right?”
