ESCAPADE Update: unraveling cause and effect in Mars’ hybrid magnetosphere
- 1University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley, Space Sciences Laboratory, Berkeley, United States of America (shaosui.xu@ssl.berkeley.edu)
- *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract
Multi-spacecraft missions after 2000 (Cluster II, THEMIS, Van Allen Probes, and MMS) have revolutionized our understanding of the causes, patterns and variability of a wide array of plasma phenomena in the terrestrial magnetospheric environment. ESCAPADE is a twin-spacecraft Mars mission concept that will similarly revolutionize our understanding of how solar wind momentum and energy flow throughout Mars’ magnetosphere to drive ion and sputtering escape, two processes that have helped shape Mars’ climate evolution over solar system history.
ESCAPADE will measure magnetic field strength and topology, ion plasma distributions as well as suprathermal electron flows and thermal electron and ion densities, from precessing elliptical 150 x ~8500 km orbits. ESCAPADE are small spacecraft (<200 kg dry mass) built by Rocket Lab USA, following ballistic Hohmann transfers to Mars. Our strategically-designed 1-year, 2-part scientific campaign of temporally and spatially-separated multipoint measurements in different regions of Mars’ diverse plasma environment, will allow us to untangle spatial from temporal variability and unravel the cause-and-effect of solar wind control of ion and sputtering escape for the first time.
ESCAPADE is a Category 3 Class D Tailored small satellite mission selected under the SIMPLEX-2 program and funded by NASA’s Heliophysics division, with a PI-managed cost cap of <$60 million. UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory provides project management, systems engineering, mission assurance, deployable booms, ion and electron electrostatic analyzers, and mission and science operations. NASA Goddard provides magnetometers. Embry Riddle Aeronautical University provides Langmuir probes. Advanced Space provides mission design. Designing, developing, and operating two spacecraft at Mars for this budget necessarily entails a combination of high heritage instrumentation, streamlined processes, and a higher risk tolerance than is common for many scientific missions. ESCAPADE is due to launch on Blue Origin’s New Glenn launch vehicle in late 2024. This presentation will focus on science topics, mission data products, lessons learned by NASA and the ESCAPADE team, and development/launch updates.
Shaosui Xu1, Robert J. Lillis1, Shannon M Curry1,8, Takuya Hara1, David Curtis1, Ellen Taylor1, Sarah Courtade1, Yingjuan Ma2, Jeff Parker3, Janet G. Luhmann1, Aroh Barjatya4, Jared Espley5, Jacob Gruesbeck5, Menelaos Sarantos5, Davin Larson1, Roberto Livi1, Phyllis Whittlesey1, Ronan Modolo6, Yuki Harada7, Christopher M. Fowler1, David A. Brain8, Paul Withers9, Ed Thiemann8, Ehson Mosleh10, Christophe Mandy10 1UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory (rlillis@berkeley.edu), 2UCLA Department of Earth and Space Sciences, 3Advanced Space LLC, 4 Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, 5 NASA Goddard space flight Center, 6UVSQ/LATMOS-IPSL/CNRS-INSU, 7 Kyoto University, 8 Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, 9Boston University Department of Astronomy, 10 Rocket Lab USA
How to cite: Xu, S., Lillis, R., Curry, S., Hara, T., Curtis, D., Taylor, E., and Courtade, S. and the ESCAPADE Team: ESCAPADE Update: unraveling cause and effect in Mars’ hybrid magnetosphere, Europlanet Science Congress 2024, Berlin, Germany, 8–13 Sep 2024, EPSC2024-133, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2024-133, 2024.
