August 18, 2024, unloading at dawn.
Careful with that forklift!
Blue & Gold in their shipping containers & GSE boxes.
More great work from our Rocket Lab partners and both spacecraft are finished environmental testing!
Blue, the spacecraft on the left, has completed a successful thermal vacuum test campaign. Meanwhile Gold, the spacecraft on the right, has completed pre-environments testing and is now into vibration testing. Not long to go until these beautiful machines are shipped out to the Cape ready for their journey to Mars!
Blue spacecraft completed shock & vibe testing at Rocket Lab USA, Long Beach. Ready for TVAC!
Our partners at Rocket Lab USA are working hard to integrate the propulsion systems we need to be captured by Mars’s gravity and synchronize our orbits!
ESCAPADE Engine Installation
The full Science & Project teams met at UC Berkeley on January 29 to provide updates and familiarize all parts of the project with each other as we move into our launch year!!
With the two spacecraft (mostly) assembled, it’s time to carefully review the configuration of the system & ensure that all unit-level, subsystem, and system testing has been completed. Here is where we make sure everything is ready to put the spacecraft through their environmental tests, i.e. the conditions they will face (vibration, acoustic, vacuum, and thermal) during launch and in space.
Fully tested and delivered, time to mount the instruments on the Blue & Gold Spacecraft and put them through their paces!!
We built up a full copy of the spacecraft to make sure our design can survive the punishing environment of launch into space!
It’s Instrument Suite I&T! Instrument teams are hard at work assembling, testing, disassembling, cleaning, retesting. Here’s EESA-e instrument lead Phyllis Whittlesey hard at work.
After some challenges over the summer following changing the separation and propulsion systems, the team at UCB and RL completed a successful CDR. From the Independent Review Board:
The Escapade independent Mission CDR demonstrated stunning progress since the Spacecraft CDR in June. All the actions from SCDR were addressed. The entire independent review board, as well as the NASA reviewers, were impressed with the professionality and thoroughness of the presentation at this MCDR. This was a fantastic review!
New Zealand COVID delays impacted qualification schedule of original system; inadequate time remained to resolve issues found.
Replaced with off-the-shelf solution from Arianne Space.
New design brought up to CDR maturity, peer reviewed
After 8 months of design work with a Rocket Lab USA and successful 2nd PDR, ESCAPADE passes its KDP-C on August 17, 2021, with a new target launch readiness date of May 2024.
Press Release: Space company Rocket Lab plans to build new Mars spacecraft
The University of California-Berkeley has chosen California-based space company Rocket Lab to build two spacecraft for one of the least expensive interplanetary missions in history, a scientific investigation of the Martian magnetosphere. Read more.
Before we realized EESA had to be body-mounted
NASA Planetary Director Lori Glaze calls Rob: ESCAPADE has been selected for Phase A/B study!
Rob looking goofy in promo video.
MISEN Cubesat Concept & sample orbits