ESCAPE, PLASMA AND ACCELERATION DYNAMICS EXPLORERS (ESCAPADE) MISSION DESIGN

The Escape, Plasma and Acceleration Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission will provide a comprehensive picture of how solar wind energy flows through Mars’ unique hybrid magnetosphere to drive ion and sputtering escape. This paper provides a new examination into ESCAPADE’s mission design, as of 2022, surveying each phase of the transfer from launch through the end of the primary science mission at Mars. The two ESCAPADE spacecraft launch as secondaries on a launch in 2024 and traverse a complex mission design to arrive into the same science orbit about Mars, establishing the first formation in orbit about Mars. ESCAPADE’s science includes two campaigns: the first involves both spacecraftbeing in the same orbit in a string-of-pearls configuration; the second involves both spacecraft traversing very different plasma regions about Mars.