The POT and Blue Origin They plan to launch this Wednesday from Florida the mission Escapewhich will study the interaction between the solar wind and the magnetic field of Mars, after postponing it on Sunday due to meteorological issues.
The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (Escapade) mission, which consists of two identical satellites, will take off from Launch Complex 36 of the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (Florida) with a launch window between 2:50 p.m. and 4:17 p.m. EST (7:50 p.m. and 9:17 p.m. GMT), Blue Origin reported.
The results of this mission will help scientists understand how and when Mars lost its atmosphere and will provide key information about the conditions that future astronauts traveling or settling there would face.
The initiative will allow obtaining an unprecedented three-dimensional view of the magnetosphere and ionosphere of the red planet, according to NASA.
This is the second launch of a New Glenn rocket, from Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezoswhich will try to land its first stage on a platform in the sea, after failing in the inaugural mission.
During the first flight last January, the rocket’s first stage reached orbit, but failed to recover atop the barge in the Atlantic.
The mission will also test a new interplanetary trajectory that could transform future trips to the Red Planet by making them more flexible and frequent.
Instead of using the traditional Hohmann transfer maneuver – which restricts launches to a window of a few weeks every 26 months – the mission will first head to a Lagrange point before heading to Mars.
Escapade, with a total cost of 49 million dollars, will offer for the first time a “stereo” view, that is, two identical satellites that will observe the same phenomenon at the same time from different points in space.
The idea is to observe how the solar wind affects the upper atmosphere of Mars, key to understanding the loss of water and atmospheric gases that transformed its climate billions of years ago.