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Missions to the #Moon #Mars #Moon2Mars #JournyToMars
1996-01-01 - 2032-12-31
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, being only larger than Mercury.
In English, Mars carries the name of the Roman god of war and is often referred to as the “Red Planet”. The latter refers to the effect of the iron oxide prevalent on Mars’ surface, which gives it a reddish appearance distinctive among the astronomical bodies visible to the naked eye. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, with surface features reminiscent of the impact craters of the Moon and the valleys, deserts and polar ice caps of Earth.
The days and seasons are comparable to those of Earth, because the rotational period as well as the tilt of the rotational axis relative to the ecliptic plane are similar. Mars is the site of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano and highest known mountain on any planet in the Solar System and of Valles Marineris, one of the largest canyons in the Solar System. The smooth Borealis basin in the northern hemisphere covers 40% of the planet and may be a giant impact feature. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped. These may be captured asteroids, similar to 5261 Eureka, a Mars trojan.
In December 2017, on the 45th anniversary of the last manned mission to the Lunar surface, President Donald Trump approved Space Policy Directive-1 that includes a lunar mission on the pathway to Mars and beyond. The directive calls for NASA to “lead an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system and to bring back to Earth new knowledge and opportunities.” With this direction NASA will put astronauts on the Moon in the next decade, and lay the foundation for human exploration of Mars.
Links:
Moon2Mars
NASA’s Moon to Mars Plans – Youtube playlist
NASA Mars Exploration Program
Drie Marsmissies staan in de startblokken

List of Missions to Mars
Summer of Mars Webinar (TV YouTube webcast)
Artemisprogramma / Artemis program
30 days until NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover touch down on Mars
Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover – landing (TV NASAtv)
Seismic ripples reveal size of Mars’s core
Chinese verkenner maakt geslaagde landing op Mars

Agenda 29-08-2022 – Artemis I : launch

ESCAPADE mission to Mars
2025-11-09 20:45 - 2028-05-09 00:00 (Europe/Amsterdam)
Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) is a planned spacecraft mission to Mars consisting of two spacecraft known as Blue and Gold, the mission is led by UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory.
Once expected to launch in October 2024, it is part of NASA‘s SIMPLEx program. In August 2024 the spacecraft arrived at the launch site. However, NASA postponed the launch due to schedule and technical issues involved with the mission’s New Glenn launch vehicle, which was set to debut with the launch of these spacecraft. Launch on the New Glenn is now planned for no earlier than November 9, 2025. The science goals of ESCAPADE are to:

understand the processes controlling the structure of Mars’ hybrid magnetosphere and how it guides ion flows
understand how energy and momentum are transported from the solar wind through Mars’ magnetosphere
understand the processes controlling the flow of energy and matter into and out of the collisional atmosphere

There are three science experiments onboard each identical spacecraft: EMAG, EESA, and ELP. EMAG, which was developed by the NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center, is a magnetometer that will measure DC magnetic fields up to 1000 nT, mounted at the end of the boom to reduce magnetic noise from the spacecraft. EESA is an electrostatic analyzer designed to measure the energies, fluxes, and masses of suprathermal ions from 2 eV to 20 keV and energies and fluxes of suprathermal electrons from 3 eV to 10 keV. It is mounted on the upper deck of the spacecraft bus, with a 240° x 120° field of view for electrons and 247.5° x 90° field of view for ions. ELP, developed by the Space and Atmospheric Instrumentation Lab at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, is a Langmuir probe consisting of three separate sensors: the multi-needle Langmuir probe (mNLP) consists of 4 thin needles mounted in two pairs ~3/4 way up the boom and measures thermal electron density; the two planar ion probes (PIPs) are mounted on the instrument deck and measure thermal ion density, and the floating potential probe (FPP) is also mounted on the spacecraft deck and measures changes in relative spacecraft electrostatic potential. Once the nominal science orbit is achieved, approximately six months after arriving at Mars, Science Campaign A involves both spacecraft flying in the same orbit at varying distances from one another, ~170 × 8,400 km (5.66 hours) with an inclination of 65 degrees. This will last approximately six months, at which time Blue will lower its apoapsis to 7,000 km and Gold will raise its apoapsis to 10,000 km. With different orbital periods (4.9 and 6.6 hours), the orbits will precess (due to Mars’ nonuniform gravity field) at different rates and thus separate, allowing simultaneous measurements of distant parts of the Mars magnetosphere. This campaign will operate for approximately five months until the end of the nominal science mission less than three years after launch. Launches on November 9 and 12, 2025, were scrubbed due to weather conditions and solar storms; the next launch attempt is scheduled for November 13, 2025. The launch window opens at 19:57 UTC and runs through 21:25 UTC.
Links:
ESCAPADE
Voor het eerst in jaren missie naar Mars, vuurproef voor raket Jeff Bezos
