Blue and Gold are bound for Blue Origin

Preparations are underway for Rocket Lab’s maiden space expedition. Two of its spacecraft will embark on an 11-month journey to Mars in the fall when they board a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket.

However, prior to that, on Thursday, the twin spacecraft, known as Blue and Gold, departed Rocket Lab’s spacecraft manufacturing facility in Long Beach, California, and started their journey to Florida’s Space Coast.

The pair will provide assistance to NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (EscaPADE) mission, referring to it as the first orbital science mission to the Red Planet with multiple spacecraft according to the agency. The mission is scheduled to launch on the first-ever New Glenn flight no earlier than September 2024.

The lead systems engineer for EscaPADE, Christophe Mandy, gave a media tour of the Long Beach location last week and highlighted various areas of the space as well as the satellites. He mentioned that the science payloads on board are under the control of the Space Science Lab (SSL) at the University of California, Berkeley.

The lab working on it specializes in heliophysics. Thus, Mandy explained, “they research the interactions that occur between the Sun’s activities and those of the rest of the solar system. The focus of their investigation in this particular instance is how the Martian atmosphere and solar wind interact.

They have two distinct objectives in mind. They’re searching for a phenomenon known as “sputtering,” which is the disappearance of a particle that strikes a particle at Mars and causes it to billiard ball effect. The particle from the Sun that has an electric field usually interacts through another type of interaction known as “ion escape.”. After then, the electric field kicks off another particle by stealing its electric field. “.

Scientists will be better able to comprehend how the Martian atmosphere may have changed over time to become uninhabitable and incapable of supporting liquid water on its surface, according to Mandy, if more is known about these effects. The MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission, which was launched in 2013 with a single spacecraft, left the mission unfinished.

Over the course of their 11-month science mission, each of the EscaPADE spacecraft will employ a suite of three primary science instruments to look for these answers.

The Escapade Magnetometer, or EMAG.

ElectroStatic Analyzers, or EESA for short.

Escapade Langmuir Probe, or ELP.

constructing and allocating funds for Mars.

As part of NASA’s SIMPLEx (Small, Innovative Missions for PLanetary Exploration) program, the EscaPADE satellites are being constructed. NASA chose the mission and two others in 2019; the funding for each mission was capped at $55 million. In comparison, $671 million was spent on the MAVEN mission.

Initially, according to Mandy, the mission was realized as a component of NASA’s Psyche mission, and Tyvak International was awarded the contract for the satellites. The agency’s decision to replace the Psyche mission’s disposable Falcon 9 rocket with a Falcon Heavy in 2020, according to Space News, altered the mission’s course.

At that time, a NASA spokesperson told Space News, “This trajectory is not optimal for a mission with the goal of Mars capture and orbit, as EscaPADE is required to do, and would have required EscaPADE into an extended cruise phase to get into its correct orbit.”.

This meant that NASA started looking for a different launch option and that EscaPADE was de-manifested from the Psyche mission. Concurrently, U. B. Berkeley was given an extra $1.08 million and nine months to rework the mission to accommodate the greatest number of launch vehicle options.

The University gave Rocket Lab a contract in November 2020 to build the spacecraft, and in August 2021, the target launch date was set for October 2024.

“The eight kilogram instrument set is the payload on this spacecraft. Since the spacecraft weighs 525 kg total, we must send an additional 516 kg to Mars in order to carry the remaining eight kilograms, Mandy explained. This is mainly due to the difficulty of traveling from Earth orbit to Mars. “We are traveling from Earth orbit to Mars in order to provide NASA with the greatest possible variety of launch options.”. Which, incidentally, I think is a pretty awesome accomplishment. “.

Rocket Lab was short on time because the mission’s objective was to launch by 2024 in order to take advantage of the best planetary launch window.

A Mars mission typically lasts ten years. Large-scale projects like MSR and [Mars Sample Return] began in 2002, making it more than 20 years old. According to Mandy, that is the typical speed for an interplanetary mission. Three and a half years was all we had. “.

According to Mandy, every aspect of the two spacecraft’s conception and operation was planned to reduce costs and maximize schedule. The aim, according to him, was to achieve “uncompromising efficiency.”. “.

Mandy stated, “There really isn’t anything on the satellite that is unnecessary, complex, or extraneous.”. “To identify some really great synergies, we usually push the technical side’s capabilities. “.

Mandy said that most of these spacecraft, including the avionics boxes, radios, star trackers, solar panels, and multi-layer insulation (MLI), were built by Rocket Lab. According to him, the propellant tanks were the last components of the spacecraft to arrive on July 8, 2024, and they had the longest lead time in the manufacturing process.

The scientific tools that come from the U. C. In these two-deck spacecraft, Berkeley sits on top. The upper deck is designated for cooling down heat-producing components such as the batteries and avionics. It is necessary for the propellant tanks and all of the fluid lines on the bottom deck to remain warm.

According to Mandy, they were able to transfer more of the available mass from the structure to the other components by using a two-deck carbon composite structure. That is a significant departure from conventional industry models, he said.

“The primary structure, or main structure, should make up roughly 20 to 25 percent of the spacecraft’s mass, according to the typical number you provided. Ours is 11% when we go about it that way, Mandy said. We are able to do that by pushing composites to extremes. “.

The Explorer satellite bus developed by Rocket Lab serves as the foundation for EscaPADE. Together with Lightning, Pioneer, and Photon, it is one of four products in its spacecraft line. The capabilities that the mission requires determine which satellite bus should be chosen.

“There is a very, very high mass fraction of fuel in the Explorer product line, which would include the mission we sent to the Moon on Capstone, or EscaPADE. It’s a staggering figure of nearly 70 percent in the case of EscaPADE, according to Mandy. Therefore, you’ll probably choose Explorer if your mission requires a lot of delta-v. “.

The primary propulsion engine is an Arianespace S400-12 Biprop Thruster that combines dinitrogen tetroxide (NTO) and monomethylhydrazine (MMH). When deciding which components, like the engines, to build and which to buy, Mandy said they considered a variety of factors.

We examined every possible combination of engines to achieve our goal of reaching Mars. Rocket Lab utilizes in-house engines. The accomplishment of the mission is our top priority, according to Mandy. We simply chose one of these highly reputable, dependable, long-lasting mission engines that were produced by other companies. “.

Travel to the planet Mars.

The spacecraft still has a long, symbolic road ahead of them before they are prepared for launch, even after they have arrived in Florida. In addition to another comprehensive performance test, Mandy stated that Blue and Gold will undergo a 21-day processing period.

Subsequently, he and his group will remove all of the “remove before flight” covers that are covering different areas of the spacecraft. Prior to fueling the spacecraft, they must also turn on and off a number of plugs.

“On the bottom are four nitrogen tanks. These are the tanks of our attitude control system. Nitrogen has to be poured into those, Mandy said. “There is the actual fueling itself, and there are two pressure tanks with helium at the top. We’re prepared after completing all of that. “.

Before the rocket’s first launch, the twin spacecraft will be mated to the payload adapter for Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. Working with a new rocket, according to Mandy, has been an intriguing process.

Due to the fact that it is a new launch vehicle, their initial set of requirements was not entirely specified. He added that in order to get everything straight, we had to collaborate with Blue Origin, NASA LSP (Launch Services Program), and the program side, which includes Berkeley, Goddard, and NASA. “Because Blue Origin doesn’t yet have a user manual, they will eventually have one; once a company has launched a significant number of launch vehicles, they will have those clearly defined, thoroughly specified user guides. “.

After launch, the spacecraft will travel to Mars in about 11 months. There are roughly seven burns that precede the Mars orbit insertion burn, which will last for roughly 700 seconds and is, according to Mandy, the most crucial point to reach in the mission.

“Not only is it the one, crucial burn, but it’s also the pucker part because, once you get past MOI, we have extra mass and margin on everything,” Mandy remarked. Additionally, gravity is on your side. “.