Category Archives: Mars

Humans are closing in touching down on Mars and beginning the colonizing process, but can humans survive on Mars with all of its particle radiation?

A new paper has been put forward by an international group of scientists who explored that question. Due to Mars' atmosphere being much thinner than Earth's, human explorers will be subjected to high dosages of particle radiation from the Sun, distant galaxies, and stars. However, humans can withstand this exposure to this radiation, but only for a period of time before it becomes too dangerous to the body.

According to the paper, Mars explorers' maximum mission duration shouldn't be longer than four years as the astronaut will be exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation that could significantly reduce life expectancy. The researchers published the new study in Space Weather and found that most of the radiation astronauts would be exposed to over a four-year mission would come from celestial objects outside of our solar system.

Additionally, the study recommends future NASA astronaut missions on Mars to be much less than four-year intervals to keep astronauts healthy, and that human Mars missions should be launched when Earth is at its solar maximum, because the solar particles from our Sun will block out dangerous particles from distant galaxies and stars.

Yuri Shprits, a UCLA research geophysicist and co-author of the paper, said, "This study shows that while space radiation imposes strict limitations on how heavy the spacecraft can be and the time of launch, and it presents technological difficulties for human missions to Mars, such a mission is viable."

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Mars is safe for humans, but there is a catch to surviving on it - TweakTown

You may be wondering why, for some time now, weve started showing you glimpses of Mars, captured on camera by the various pieces of hardware humanity has in place on or around the alien world. The answer is simple: we may be going there, possibly even during our lifetime, and we might as well start to know the place a little better.

So yes, we timidly started a while back our Get to Know Mars section, where stuff like this thing here will be featured.

And this thing here is a dome-shaped outcrop in the Orcus Patera region of the planet,a tiny elliptical depression measuring 380 km (240 miles) long and 140 km (87 miles) wide. The depressions rim rises 1.8 km (1.11 miles) above the plains around it, and the depression itself is up to 600 meters (1,968 feet) below its surroundings.

The outcrop's origins are not entirely known, and it could have been formed as a result of either volcanic or tectonic processes. As for the crater, scientists do not rule it might have at one point been a round impact crated, deformed by compressional forces.

But most people place their money on the Orcus Patera being the result of an oblique impact, perhaps less than five degrees from the horizontal, according to the European Space Agency.

The main pic of this piece shows one of the most recent images of the region, taken from an altitude of 278 km (173 miles) by the HiRISE camera fitted on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) back in September 2015, and recently republished by NASA and the University of Arizona.

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Rock Formation on Mars Looks Like a Lonely Dome Lost Near a Weirdly-Shaped Crater - autoevolution

NASA's Perseverance rover will soon try again to snag its first Mars sample.

Perseverance landed inside the Red Planet's Jezero Crater this past February, on a mission to hunt for signs of ancient Mars life and collect dozens of drilled samples for future return to Earth. On Aug. 6, the car-sized robot attempted to grab the first of those samples, but things didn't go according to plan: The rock Perseverance drilled into turned out to be surprisingly soft, breaking into crumbly bits that didn't make it into the sampling tube.

Since then, the rover has cruised 1,493 feet (455 meters) away to a craggy ridge the mission team calls "Citadelle" (French for "castle"), which seems to offer greener sampling pastures.

Related: Where to find the latest Mars photos from NASA's Perseverance rover

"The ridge is capped with a layer of rock that appears to resist wind erosion, a sign that it's more likely to hold up during drilling," officials with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages Perseverance's mission, wrote in an update Thursday (Aug. 26).

The rover team has spotted a particularly inviting target at Citadelle a rock dubbed "Rochette." Over the coming days, Perseverance will use a tool at the end of its 7-foot-long (2.1 m) robotic arm to abrade the rock, allowing mission team members to get a look at its subsurface. If they like what they see, next week they'll command Perseverance to drill Rochette and collect a sample, which will hopefully be retained in one of the rover's 42 remaining tubes.

And the mission team has added a step in the sampling process for this attempt, to make sure Perseverance doesn't sock away another empty tube. After drilling and sampling Rochette, the rover will pause, giving the team time to review photos of the tube captured by Perseverance's powerful Mastcam-Z imaging system. Perseverance will seal the tube only if those photos show that it does indeed contain a sample, NASA officials said.

All of that being said, the sealed empty tube from the Aug. 6 try is far from a disaster. Perseverance still has more than 40 other tubes left, after all. And the mission team had planned to collect an empty tube at some point during the mission anyway, so researchers here on Earth could study a pristine sample of the Martian atmosphere.

"By returning samples to Earth, we hope to answer a number of scientific questions, including the composition of Mars' atmosphere," Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley, who's based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in Thursday's update. "That's why we're interested in an atmospheric sample along with rock samples."

NASA and the European Space Agency are partnering to bring Perseverance's samples back to Earth. The Martian material could land here as early as 2031, if everything goes well.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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Perseverance Mars rover gearing up for 2nd rock sampling attempt (photos) - Space.com

Thanks to data from three different Mars orbiters, scientists have determined that small, local dust storms, like their much larger counterparts, play a key role in drying out the Red Planet.

Martian dust storms can spread across the whole planet and envelope it in darkness. For a long time, planetary scientists have known that those behemoth storms were responsible for wicking away the planet's water. But Mars was once a lush world, oceans and all, and the large dust storms can't explain the full magnitude of Mars' water loss. According to new research, smaller local dust storms, too, are drying out the Red Planet as well.

"This paper helps us virtually go back in time and say, 'OK, now we have another way to lose water that will help us relate this little water we have on Mars today with the humongous amount of water we had in the past," Geronimo Villanueva, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in a statement.

Related: Water on Mars: Exploration & evidenceRead more: Mars dust storm 2018: How it grew & killed the Opportunity rover

Regional dust storms toy with water vapor in the Martian atmosphere, warming it up and slowing its transition to water. The dust storms also hold that water vapor up higher in the atmosphere, where ultraviolet radiation can more easily strip the hydrogen atoms out of water molecules, a process that can't run in reverse.

The new research focuses on one particular regional dust storm that unfolded in January and February 2019. Before the dust storm began, scientists could only identify water vapor near the Martian surface, since it usually freezes at quite low altitudes. As the storm intensified, the researchers saw temperatures warming and the water vapor rising. And as the vapor rose closer to the sun's ultraviolet rays, the researchers saw a swell of hydrogen, the signature of water molecules coming apart.

No single spacecraft in orbit at Mars could have tracked all of those dust storm characteristics; instead, the researchers needed to incorporate data from three different probes. The European Space Agency's Trace Gas Orbiter measured water vapor and ice concentrations in the lower atmosphere, where NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter backed it up by watching dust and temperature. And another NASA probe, Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN), monitored hydrogen in the upper atmosphere.

That teamwork is a unique achievement. According to the researchers, it's the first time that so many probes have worked in tandem like this. "We've really caught the whole system in action," Mike Chaffin, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said in the statement.

The new research is described in a paper published Monday (Aug. 16) in the journal Nature Astronomy.

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Even small Mars dust storms dry out the Red Planet, scientists find - Space.com

BUTLER COUNTY, Pa., Aug. 26, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --The Borough of Mars, Pennsylvania, is hosting a "free" two-day STEAM education festival called the Mars Exploration Celebration on August 27-28, 2021. The outdoor event inspired by exploration, innovation, and celebration includes a mix of virtual and in-person speakers as well as exhibits, is being offered for the fourth time in the small Borough of Mars; the Red Planet's namesake.

"Mars Exploration Celebration provides hands-on and minds-on activities with the goal to make STEAM education not only fun but to empower our youth to become curious learners," said Missy Gralish, member of Mars New Year Board of Directors. "At the same time, the Celebration provides an exciting and engaging event for folks of all ages."

Friday, August 27 (5:00-10:00 pm EST), is a celebratory night and includes live interactive virtual presentations from NASA's Chief Scientist Dr. James Green as well as other NASA officials; in-person presentations from Sharad Bhaskaran of Astrobotic and Dr. Andy Aldrin of the Aldrin Family Foundation; live music from Dancing Queen, and a custom drone show in the night sky provided by Firefly Drone Shows.

Saturday, August 28th (12:00-10:00 pm EST), will be filled with live virtual NASA speakers on the Mars Bank Stage and the NASA Theater; a live virtual presentation from Festival of the Spoken Nerd, and in-person presentations from Astrobotic and Dr. Andy Aldrin. Saturday also boasts a Sci-Fi Costume Contest with cash prizes and the Martian of the Year Awards. The Winners of the Mars STEAM Challenge will be announced and prizes awarded. Live music from Elmoz Fire will be provided and another fantastic evening of the custom drone show in the night sky.

Throughout the streets of Mars and on both days, you will find robotics competitions in the Robotics Village, drone races, a STEAM maker build, interactive Mars and Moon Maps from the Aldrin Family Foundation, Moon rovers from Astrobotic, a mini history museum from Carnegie Museum of Natural History, an autonomous vehicle from Argo AI, a mobile glass studio from Pittsburgh Glass Center, kid zone games, hands-on STEAM related activities, food, vendors, and so much more. Stop and say hello to Ralph Crewe of "Isn't That Something" podcast as well as Buzz Aldrin's son Dr. Andy Aldrin.

Both a NASA Theater and SpaceX Theater will be included in the festival this year. The NASA Theater will offer live interactive educational sessions from NASA and other space related organizations. Seating availability will be on a first come basis. Questions for our presenters are encouraged. The SpaceX Theater will offer educational videos, and informational materials. NASA and SpaceX materials and memorabilia will be available at both locations.

"The Borough of Mars is excited to a festival for families and youth centered on traveling to and someday living on the planet Mars,"said Mars Borough Mayor Gregg Hartung."We have put together this two-day festival in challenging times of COVID in collaboration with NASA and now for the first time Astrobotic Pittsburgh's leading aerospacecompany and the Aldrin Family Foundation who follows in the footsteps of Astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Come join us in celebrating and exploring the planet Mars in Mars, Pennsylvania!"

Mars New Year and the Mars Exploration Celebration are following COVID guidelines issued by the CDC and the Pennsylvania Health Department for outdoor events.

The festival will be streamed live from the Mars New Year Facebook page and YouTube account. For the streaming links and more information on scheduled events and speakers, STEAM activities, exhibits, parking, shuttles, and an interactive map, please visit http://www.marsnewyear.com.

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Missy Gralish

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Mars Exploration Celebration Blasts Off This Weekend in Mars - Clearfield Progress

One of the biggest ongoing changes in space exploration is the introduction of commercial methods into the field. Commercial launch providers like RocketLab and SpaceX have fundamentally changed the way the industry does business. Now researchers are taking their move fast and break things approach to another part of the industry actual mission design.

One of a trio of missions that will attempt to lower a missions cost to launch by a factor of 10 is led by researchers at UC Berkeley. Known as the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE), the mission will consist of twin satellites, known as Blue and Gold after UC Berkeleys colors. Their primary mission will be to monitor Mars, watching for its atmosphere and how the planet is affected by the solar wind. One of the most intriguing things about the project is that it should cost only around $80 million from start to data collection in Mars orbit.

Various factors enable such a dramatic price drop from the $800 million that such a mission would typically cost using traditional satellite development methods. One large cost savings is high-risk tolerance. Dr. Robert Lillis, an associate director at UC Berkeleys Space Sciences Laboratory, puts it plaintively: Instead of spending $800 million for a 95% chance of success, can we spend $80 million for an 80% chance?

Such risk tolerance has been rare in the space industry in the past. Still, it has slowly grown in acceptance as SpaceX and its competitors literally blow through rocket prototypes regularly. One of those competitors is RocketLab, which has begun collaborating with the ESCAPADE team to help develop the program further.

All this different thinking has already caused some problems in the development of ESCAPADE, even to this point. The Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program at NASA funded previous work on the project. It had already received $8.3 million in funding to kickstart preliminary development. However, its original launch partner (Psyche) got moved to a different launch vehicle, leaving no space for ESCAPADE.

Thats where RocketLab stepped in. Its Photon launch platform can send the satellites into a different orbit than originally intended, but it is still the right kind of orbit to complete its mission objectives. The missions instruments had to be redesigned to fit the new launch vehicle as well, though they still perform the same general functions.

Theres still some time to go before the final designs need to be completed, though. Currently, the plan is to launch Blue and Gold on a Photon in 2024, with data coming back from the satellites beginning in 2026. Thats still a much longer time than the rapid prototype development cycles in Silicon Valley or Shenzhen, but it also takes into account just how massive the solar system truly is.

Learn More:UC Berkeley Blue and Gold satellites headed to Mars in 2024NASA NASAs ESCAPADE Mission Twin Martian Orbiters Moves Toward LaunchRocketLab Rocket Lab Spacecraft Confirmed for Mars as NASA Greenlights ESCAPADE Small Satellite Interplanetary MissionDailyCal.com NASA approves key funding for UC Berkeley satellite mission to Mars

Lead Image:Artist depiction of the ESCAPADE satellites.Credit Rocket Lab

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NASA Will be Sending two More Missions to Mars in 2024, Costing Just $80 Million - Universe Today

University of Hawaii at Mnoa scientists are currently exploring Mars via a car-sized robot known as the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. Perseverance is the most sophisticated rover NASA has ever sent to the Red Planet, and the Mars 2020 team are helping acquire samples of rocks from its landing site, the floor of Jezero Crater, for return to Earth by a future mission.

After collecting samples and characterizing the lithology (the types of rocks) of the craters floor, Perseverance will head West to investigate the deposits of an ancient river delta, which formed early in Mars history when the crater contained a lake.

When weve finished in this particular area, were going to head over to the delta front, said Sarah Fagents, a researcher at UH Mnoas Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) and volcanologist with the Mastcam-Z camera team. Those deposits were laid down in a lake environment, and they might be the location of some of the best potential biosignatures, which is the key driver of this mission, to seek out the signs of [ancient] life.

Returning a sample of a lava flow or ash deposit would allow researchers to date the sample and determine an age for those deposits, which in turn allows them to more accurately date other surfaces on Mars, through a technique known as crater chronology.

If we can find a lava flow or an ash deposit in Jezero, we can sample that deposit and bring back a sample to Earth in the future. And in our labs on Earth, we can date radiometrically (test) those samples and get an absolute age constraint on the deposits of Jezero Crater, said Fagents.

The team has been using a newly enhanced auto navigation system, which allows the rover to drive on its own. Auto navigation makes 3D maps of the terrain ahead, identifies hazards and plans a route around any obstacles without additional direction from controllers back on Earth.

Using auto navigation allows the rover to drive longer distances in a day so the team can explore more of the terrain and acquire samples of diverse rock types.

The auto navigation on the rover means that we can drive farther in a single sol, which is a martian day, which is really useful for this mission because were on a tight schedule to explore as much of the crater as we can, said Eleni Ravanis, a HIGP PhD student and also a member of the Mastcam-Z team.

After landing on Mars in February, the first 100 Martian sols were devoted to instrument checkouts, helicopter operations and initial science observations. The rover traveled short distances to test drive and instrument capabilities, drop off shields and covers, and deploy the helicopter for its historic flights. Since then, researchers have been working on their first science campaign devoted to acquiring samples, characterizing rocks and investigating the crater floor deposits.

Its so exciting to be able to see, for the first time, places that weve only seen from orbit before. So these are places that weve never seen close up, no one has seen close up before, said Ravanis. So its always really exciting to get these images back and share it with the team.

This mission is the first stage of an international, multi-agency, decade-plus long program to bring samples from Mars back to Earth. Involvement in missions like Mars 2020 enhances the reputation of UH as an R1 research university, which continues to conduct cutting-edge research at the forefront of space exploration.

Work on the Mars 2020 mission contributes to the broader range of exciting research and educational initiatives in Earth, planetary and space sciences at UH. Research directly benefits the education of undergraduate students, providing programs such as HIGPs Earth and Planetary Exploration Technology undergraduate certificate, and the College of Engineerings aerospace engineering program, which are taught by faculty with experience in instrument design, active missions and analysis of Earth and planetary data sets.

These programs are training the future workforce in Hawaiis growing aerospace industry, and equipping students with the skills needed to address key problems faced by the state and nation.

This work is an example of UH Mnoas goal of Excellence in Research: Advancing the Research and Creative Work Enterprise (PDF), one of four goals identified in the 201525 Strategic Plan (PDF), updated in December 2020.

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UH Mars rover team helps acquire samples of Red Planet | University of Hawaii System News - UH System Current News

Sending human travelers to Mars would require scientists and engineers to overcome a range of technological and safety obstacles. One of them is the grave risk posed by particle radiation from the sun, distant stars and galaxies.

Answering two key questions would go a long way toward overcoming that hurdle: Would particle radiation pose too grave a threat to human life throughout a round trip to the red planet? And, could the very timing of a mission to Mars help shield astronauts and the spacecraft from the radiation?

In a new article published in the peer-reviewed journal Space Weather, an international team of space scientists, including researchers from UCLA, answers those two questions with a no and a yes.

That is, humans should be able to safely travel to and from Mars, provided that the spacecraft has sufficient shielding and the round trip is shorter than approximately four years. And the timing of a human mission to Mars would indeed make a difference: The scientists determined that the best time for a flight to leave Earth would be when solar activity is at its peak, known as the solar maximum.

The scientists calculations demonstrate that it would be possible to shield a Mars-bound spacecraft from energetic particles from the sun because, during solar maximum, the most dangerous and energetic particles from distant galaxies are deflected by the enhanced solar activity.

A trip of that length would be conceivable. The average flight to Mars takes about nine months, so depending on the timing of launch and available fuel, it is plausible that a human mission could reach the planet and return to Earth in less than two years, according to Yuri Shprits, a UCLA research geophysicist and co-author of the paper.

This study shows that while space radiation imposes strict limitations on how heavy the spacecraft can be and the time of launch, and it presents technological difficulties for human missions to Mars, such a mission is viable, said Shprits, who also is head of space physics and space weather at GFZ Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany.

The researchers recommend a mission not longer than four years because a longer journey would expose astronauts to a dangerously high amount of radiation during the round trip even assuming they went when it was relatively safer than at other times. They also report that the main danger to such a flight would be particles from outside of our solar system.

Shprits and colleagues from UCLA, MIT, Moscows Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology and GFZ Potsdam combined geophysical models of particle radiation for a solar cycle with models for how radiation would affect both human passengers including its varying effects on different bodily organs and a spacecraft. The modeling determined that having a spacecrafts shell built out of a relatively thick material could help protect astronauts from radiation, but that if the shielding is too thick, it could actually increase the amount of secondary radiation to which they are exposed.

The two main types of hazardous radiation in space are solar energetic particles and galactic cosmic rays; the intensity of each depends on solar activity. Galactic cosmic ray activity is lowest within the six to 12 months after the peak of solar activity, while solar energetic particles intensity is greatest during solar maximum, Shprits said.

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Will it be safe for humans to fly to Mars? - UCLA Newsroom

While a lot of the world still struggles to cope with the continued effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries have also been devastated by wildfires, floods and volcanoes, just as the IPCC released its latest reportinto the global impact of climate change.

However, its not all bad news. There is still plenty or innovation going on around the world, with rubbish being used to make public benches, further scientific discoveries on Mars, and many efforts being made to combat climate change.

So take a look through the good, the bad, and the ugly in our round-up of science images for August 2021.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with Boeings CST-100 Starliner spacecraft aboard is seen as it is rolled out of the Vertical Integration Facility to the launch pad at Space Launch Complex 41 ahead of the Orbital Flight Test-2 mission, 2 August 2021 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, USA. Boeings Orbital Flight Test-2 will be Starliners second uncrewed flight test and will dock to the International Space Station as part of NASAs Commercial Crew Program. Photo by NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

This image, taken from aboard the International Space Station on the 2 August 2021, shows the aurora australisas it streams across the Earths atmosphere as the station orbited 271 miles above the southern Indian Ocean in between Asia and Antarctica. Photo by NASA

Rescue personnel evacuate victims from a subway train and tunnel during a homeland defence emergency drill involving a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack in an urban environment. The drill took place at the New York Fire Department Training Academy on Randalls Island in New York City, USA, on 4 August 2021. Photo by Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images

This image taken by NASAs Perseverance rover on 6 August 2021, shows the hole drilled in a Martian rock in preparation for the rovers first attempt to collect a sample. It was taken by one of the rovers hazard cameras in what the rovers science team has nicknamed a paver rock in the Crater Floor Fractured Rough area of Jezero Crater. Photo by NASA

An interior view of an automated underground parking lot on 6 August 2021 in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province of China. Photo by Zhai Yujia/China News Service/Getty Images

A man watches as wildfires approach Kochyli beach near Limni village on the island of Evia, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) north of Athens, Greece. A new massive United Nations science report was released on the 9 August 2021, reporting on the impact of global warming due to human activity. Photo by Thodoris Nikolaou/AP/Shutterstock

An underwater photo shows the new microbialites discovered at Lake Van in Adilcevaz district of Turkeys Bitlis province on 8 August 2021. Microbialites look like reefs, but are in fact rock-like structures that are made entirely of millions of microbes. Photo by Ali Ethem Keskin/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

A tyre and wheel melted from the heat of the Dixie Fire on 8 August 2021 in Greenville, California, USA. The Dixie Fire, which has incinerated more than 463,000 acres, is the second largest recorded wildfire in state history. Photo by Maranie R. Staab/Getty Images

A photo taken on 10 August 2021 shows a photovoltaic power station on a deserted hill near Zhangjiazhuang village, Xinzhuangzi Township, Xiahuayuan District, Zhangjiakou City, North Chinas Hebei Province. Photo credit should read Costfoto/Barcroft Media/Getty Images

The Virgin Orbit Launcher One rocket in its hanger at Newquay Airport on 10 August 2021 in Newquay, United Kingdom. Spaceport Cornwall is aiming to launch its first satellites in spring of 2022. Photo by Hugh R Hastings/Getty Images

A freediver prepares to collect a specimen of a long-spined sea urchin (Diadema setosum), typically native to Indo-Pacific waters and currently invading the eastern Mediteranean sea, some 17 metres underwater off the shore of Lebanons northern coastal city of Qalamun on 11 August 2021. Photo by Ibrahim Chaloub/AFP/Getty Images

Egyptian engineer Hager gives an order to a robot nurse invented by the faculity of computer and information science at Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt, 11 August 2021. The nurse robot helps in reducing direct contact between the medical staff and patients at time of the coronavirus pandemic in order to reduce the infection risk for the medical staff. It can also conduct video calls between patients and doctors, deliver medications, and sterilise the rooms. Photo by Khaled Elfiqi/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

An engineer tests Motorola smartphones in a lab at a Lenovo production base in Wuhan in central Chinas Hubei province 13 August 2021. Photo by Feature China/Barcroft Media/Getty Images

In this aerial view, meltwater descends in shifting rivulets from Vatnajokull ice cap on 14 August 2021 near Hof, Iceland. The country is undergoing a strong impact from global warming, and since the 1990s, 90 per cent of the countrys glaciers have been retreating. Projections for the future show a continued and strong reduction in size of its three ice caps. Fjallsjokull is one of dozens of glacier tongues that descend from Vatnajokull, Icelands biggest ice cap, along the southeastern coast. Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images

A stuck train after flooding is pictured in Wald im Pinzgau near Salzburg, Austria, on 17 August 2021. Storms had battered large parts of Austria since late August with landslides and flooding hitting especially Austrias western regions of Pinzgau and Pongau in the state of Salzburg, bordering Germany. Some one hundred people stuck in cars as landslides hit roads had to be rescued, while three people were reported injured. Photo by JFK/EXPA/AFP/Getty Images

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A Royal Moroccan Air Force Canadair plane douses a wildfire in the region of Chefchaouen of northern Morocco on 17 August 2021. Firefighters in northern Morocco were battling to put out two forest blazes, as the North African kingdom swelters in a heatwave. Firefighting planes were being used to tackle the conflagrations which had already destroyed some 200 hectares (500 acres) of forest. Photo by Fadel Senna/AFP/Getty Images

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano (left), and the head of the ESA Climate Office Susanne Mecklenburg (right), explore some ice caves at the Gorner Glacier in Switzerland, on 19 August 2021. They are both part of an ESA-led expedition to observe the retreat and status of the glacier, which is the second biggest ice mass in the Alps, and is situated in Switzerland near the Monte Rosa massif close to Zermatt and the Matterhorn. Photo by ESA

This photo taken and released on 20 August 2021 by China Manned Space Engineering Office via CNS shows Chinese astronaut Tang Hongbo coordinating inside the Tianhe core module on the Tiangong space station as his colleague Nie Haisheng conducts a spacewalk. Photo by China Manned Space Engineering/AFP/Getty Images

Workers examine the 25 metre (82 foot) high smog tower, built to purify the air during pollution season, in New Delhi, India, on 23 August 2021. Photo by Money Sharma/AFP/Getty Images

Staff members spray disinfectant at a school ahead of the new semester in Bozhou in Chinas eastern Anhui province on 23 August 2021. Photo by STR/AFP/Getty Images

The interior of Lichfield Cathedral is bathed in colourful patterns of light during The Great Exhibition: Science light and sound projection show in Lichfield, United Kingdom, on 24 August 2021. The exhibition sees the inside of the 900-year-old Cathedral bathed in moving light and sound projections that explore the world of science, and the ways in which it has shaped our past as well as considering how it will influence our future. Photo by Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

A drone pilot ties up a bag of food to a drone at Cala Tadira near Sant Josep de Sa Talaia in Ibiza Island on 24 August 2021. Drone to Yacht is an exclusive delivery service for yachts launched in Ibiza by the restaurant Can Yucas and the Galician company Aerocamaras to deliver food and drinks to yachts. Photo by Jaime Reina/ AFP/Getty Images

Visitors watch a 3D Micro LED screen displaying an astronaut figure during the Smart China Expo 2021 at Chongqing International Expo Center on 25 August 2021 in Chongqing, China. Photo by Chen Chao/China News Service/Getty Images

An eco-friendly bench made from 160,000 recycled milk cartons is seen in Shanghai, China, on 25 August 2021. It is reported that the environmental protection seat through special process and trial and error, has a high strength, as well as the resistance to bad weather and other factors. Photo by Wang Gang/Costfoto/Barcroft Media/Getty Images

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DIY on Mars and amazing ice caves: 24 fantastic Images of the Month August 2021 - BBC Science Focus Magazine

The ESCAPADE Mars mission will consist of two identical satellites named "Blue" and "Gold" after UC Berkeley's school colors that will study how the planet's ionosphere and magnetic field interact. Image courtesy of Rocket Lab.BERKELEY An interplanetary mission led by the University of California, Berkeley, to put two satellites dubbed "Blue" and "Gold" into orbit around Mars has been officially authorized to prepare for launch in October 2024.

The announcement last week by NASA means that by 2026 the spacecraft will likely be exploring the red planet's atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind.

Called the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, or ESCAPADE, mission, it is the culmination of two years of intense work by scientists at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory, or SSL, to show that relatively inexpensive spacecraft the design, build, test, integration and launch will cost less than $80 million can be assembled in a short period of time to explore other planets.

Typical NASA planetary missions often require more than a decade of preparation and can exceed $1 billion in costs.

"ESCAPADE and two other NASA missions recently approved are experiments to see whether advances in the space industry over the last five to 10 years can translate to a much better bang for the buck in terms of science per dollar," said mission leader Robert Lillis, SSL's associate director for planetary science and astrobiology. "Sending two spacecraft to Mars for the total cost of under $80 million is just unheard of, but current NASA leadership is taking the risk."

The UC Berkeley team will work with Rocket Lab, a space contractor based in Long Beach, California, which will supply two Photon spacecraft to house and support the instruments.

The academic/industry collaboration is an example of what NASA hopes to encourage with its Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration, or SIMPLEx, program, designed to fund compelling planetary space science with small satellites and provide more opportunities for flight experience to the science community.

These missions represent "a new commercial, higher risk, high reward way of doing things," Lillis said. Instead of spending $800 million for a 95% chance of success, can we spend $80 million for an 80% chance? This is what NASA is trying to find out with these missions, and we are lucky to be one of the guinea pigs.

The mission's goal is to collect data that could help reconstruct the climate history of Mars and determine how and when it lost its atmosphere, which was once dense enough to allow for running water, including rivers, lakes and possibly oceans.

ESCAPADE also will study the ionosphere of Mars, which can interfere with radio communications on the surface and between Earth and Mars colonists.

"With simultaneous two-point observations of the solar wind and Mars ionosphere and magnetosphere, ESCAPADE will bring us the first 'stereo' picture of this highly dynamic plasma environment," Lillis said.

This constellation of two satellites at Mars will answer big questions about the atmosphere and the solar wind in real time, said Shannon Curry, project scientist for the mission at UC Berkeley.

Rocket Lab, which teamed with UC Berkeley in June, has been building rockets and spacecraft platforms since 2006 for civil, defense and commercial customers.

NASA evaluated the missions preliminary design and project plan and determined last week that both UC Berkeley and Rocket Lab had met all milestones called key decision points necessary to prepare for launch.

The next steps include the final design of the mission and building of the instruments.

ESCAPADE is an innovative mission that demonstrates that advanced interplanetary science is now within reach for a fraction of traditional costs, and were proud to make it possible with Photon, said Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck in a statement. Passing the key decision point is a critical milestone in ESCAPADEs development and is testament to the world-class science and engineering work of the UC Berkeley and Rocket Lab teams. We are delighted to receive the green light from NASA to proceed to flight.

The mission builds on decades of experience at SSL in building satellite instruments and fleets of spacecraft to explore regions around Earth, the moon and Mars, specializing in magnetic field interactions with the wind of particles from the sun.

Each of the two satellites, named after UC Berkeley's school colors, will carry instruments built at SSL to measure the flow of high energy electrons and ionized oxygen and carbon dioxide molecules escaping from Mars, magnetic field detectors built at UCLA and a probe to measure slower or thermal ions built at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida.

With twin satellites, it is possible to measure conditions simultaneously at two places around the planet, Lillis said, allowing scientists to connect plasma conditions at one site to the escaping ion flux at another. Over the course of the mission, the two satellites will change positions to map the upper atmosphere and magnetosphere of nearly the entire planet from an altitude of between 150 and 10,000 kilometers.

When selected by NASA in 2019 to receive $8.3 million for a conceptual design, ESCAPADE was scheduled to piggyback aboard a rocket that was launching another mission, called Psyche, in August 2022.

But that opportunity evaporated when the launch vehicle was changed, and NASA looked for another option. The agency eventually deciding to launch ESCAPADE as a secondary payload aboard a different, as-yet-unselected commercial rocket

For ESCAPADE, were evaluating a number of rideshare options to enable this critically important science while also lowering costs, said Alan Zide, program executive for the mission at NASA headquarters, in a blog post on NASA's website.

As a result, while the instruments remain unchanged, they have to be reconfigured to fit the Photon platform.

"The instruments haven't changed, the science objectives haven't changed, but everything from the launch pad to the orbit in space is completely different," Lillis said. "We are going with a brand new contractor, a different propulsion system and a very much shorter mission plan in getting to Mars."

The trip to Mars will take about 11 months, after which Blue and Gold will separate and start their mission.

Lillis said that his reaction to NASA's decision was "just unbridled joy and happiness," but admitted that he won't rest easy until early in 2026, "when we get our first data from orbit around Mars."

Robert Sanders writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.

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Space News: 'Blue' and 'Gold' satellites headed to Mars in 2024 - Lake County News