Preparing for Martian Explorers: NASA Escapade investigate Mars space weather

NASA’s new ESCAPADE mission is launching to Mars to help us better understand the Sun’s influence on Mars’ past and present. Its work could help protect future human explorers from potentially dangerous space weather when they set foot on the Red Planet.

For the first time, the mission will use two identical spacecraft to investigate how the solar wind interacts with Mars’ magnetic environment and how this interaction drives the planet’s atmospheric escape. Its observations will reveal the planet’s real-time response to space weather and how the Martian magnetosphere changes over time.

The ESCAPADE orbiters build on earlier Mars missions, such as NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) orbiter. The MAVEN mission has one spacecraft that has been studying Mars’ atmospheric loss since arriving at the Red Planet in 2014.

ESCAPADE is scheduled to launch no earlier than fall 2025 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Launch Complex 36 in Florida.

Find out more about the ESCAPADE mission: https://science.nasa.g.