#mars-mission

#mars-mission

For one, it launched a pair of NASA spacecraft named ESCAPADE, which are headed to Mars orbit to study that planet's magnetic environment and atmosphere. The twin spacecraft will first travel to a Lagrange point, a place where the gravity between Earth, the Moon, and the Sun balances. The ESCAPADE spacecraft will remain there until Mars is in better alignment to travel to.

UC Berkeley scientists are in charge of two identical satellites, nicknamed Blue and Gold to honor the university's colors, set to launch for Mars as soon as Sunday. Leading NASA's ESCAPADE mission, the team based at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory's mission operations center will manage the twin satellites as they take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, this weekend and travel to Mars by 2027.

The parachute test involved dropping a dummy ExoMars descent module from an altitude of almost 30 km, and the parachutes were successfully deployed.