Rocket Lab’s Mars-Bound Twin Satellites – Blue and Gold – Hit the Road Ahead of Blue Origin Launch
30 Aug 2024
News
Rocket Lab is gearing up for its first mission to another planet. In the fall, two of its spacecraft will hitch a ride onboard a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket to begin their 11-month trek to Mars.
But before that happens, the twin spacecraft – named Blue and Gold – left Rocket Lab’s spacecraft manufacturing facility in Long Beach, California, and hit the road on Thursday to begin the journey to Florida’s Space Coast.
The duo will support NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (EscaPADE) mission, which the agency describes as the “first multi-spacecraft orbital science mission to the Red Planet.” The mission is set to launch no earlier than September 2024 on the inaugural New Glenn flight.
Last week, Christophe Mandy, the lead systems engineer on EscaPADE, led a media tour of the Long Beach site, showing off different parts of the space and the satellites themselves. He noted that the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Science Lab (SSL) is responsible for the science payloads onboard.