2024-08-25 23:50:44
The American company “Rocket Lab” has decided to launch a new scientific mission to uncover the truth about how the planet Mars lost its atmosphere, funded by the American space agency “NASA.”
According to the website “mashable“, scientists have concluded that Mars once had a thicker atmosphere and may have been capable of supporting life systems, but the planet’s climate has changed dramatically over billions of years, from an Earth-like world filled with lakes and rivers to a barren desert, raising the question, “Where did the atmosphere go?”.
The site noted that among all the new space projects, the name “Rocket Lab” might be surprising, given the company’s relative lack of fame, especially in light of its competitor “SpaceX” and its founder Elon Musk’s obsession with reaching Mars.
The company’s CEO, Peter Beck, stated in remarks to the site: “I’ve always joked that we are the only space company not led by a billionaire right now. Our biggest competitors are the two richest people on the planet, and as bad as that is for our public relations and communications department, I might be really the boring type of CEO. I don’t put out controversial things and I don’t do crazy stuff. I’m just trying to build rockets.”
The company has built two spacecraft for the upcoming Mars mission, Escapade, which is expected to launch before October 13.
If the mission is successful, it could serve as a model for how “NASA” and the commercial space industry handle interplanetary missions at a lower cost in the future.
Escapade had a budget of $80 million, under NASA’s innovative small missions program for planetary exploration (Simplex).
The company finished building the twin spacecraft in just 3.5 years at a cost of $57 million, which is a relatively modest price compared to the billions the agency typically spends on a complex mission outside Earth’s orbit.
One of the Escapade probes is called “Blue” and the other “Gold,” in honor of the colors of the University of California, Berkeley. Each is the size of a stacked washer and dryer and was recently shipped to Cape Canaveral, Florida, where they are scheduled to be integrated onto a “New Glenn” rocket from “Blue Origin,” since Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket is not powerful enough to carry the payload, although the company is working on developing a medium-lift launch vehicle called Neutron, which will not be ready for another year, Beck said.
Anticipated Achievement
The mission of the Escapade spacecraft will last approximately 11 months before reaching Mars, before starting its primary scientific mission in April 2026.
Other spacecraft have studied how solar winds interact with the Martian atmosphere, but they have not been able to complete the mission, as a single spacecraft cannot measure the true consequences of solar storms.
In addition to the instruments on the two spacecraft, it is planned to equip the probes with cameras to capture the first global images of the Martian aurora. The UAE’s probe “Hope” has taken pictures in ultraviolet light, and NASA’s “Perseverance” rover captured the first aurora from the planet’s surface last March; however, the new scientific mission may succeed in capturing the first broad glimpses of the aurora in visible light.
Scientists emphasize that this study is of great importance; for astronauts to land on Mars and explore it someday, they will need navigation and communication systems that transmit signals through the planet’s upper atmosphere. The more accurate the scientists’ models for Mars’ ionosphere—the layer of charged particles surrounding the planet—the better these technologies will work.