Tag: Spaceflight

How long does it take a planet to form – millions of years? Well, how about a moon – about the same? What if I told you the core of our Moon may have been formed in less than 6 hours? It sounds unlikely, but the idea was first proposed in 2022, and it has now got a degree of further backing.

To explain: the current broad theory is that the Moon was formed fairly shortly after Earth – around 100-150 million years after -, some 4.5 billion years ago as a result of a collision between proto-Earth and a body scientists call “Theia”, thought to be the size of Mars. The theory is that whilst Earth was dealt a glancing blow, Theia was utterly ripped apart due to a mix of the impact and Earth’s gravitational influence, resulting in a debris cloud which orbited the Earth and gradually – over further millions of years – accreted to form the Moon.

However, such a theory doesn’t account for why rocks returned to Earth by Apollo are, in isotopic terms, very similar to those of Earth’s mantle that they might well have formed here. Whilst some debris from Earth might have been cast off in a collision with Theia, by rights the lunar rocks should carry isotopic signatures largely different to those of Earth’s mantle.

In 2022, NASA funded research at Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology in the UK to try to model how such a collision between proto-Earth and Theia might have resulted in the Mon’s formation. The several hundred simulations run by the ICC suggested that whilst the collision between Earth and Theia most likely gave rise to the Moon, it likely took place a lot sooner after proto-Earth had formed: around 60 million years after, rather then between 100-150 million years after.

Such a time period would mean that both bodies would be much hotter than in the 100-150 million year period for the collision, and this would result in two things: much of Theia would likely remain intact and sink to Earth’s molten core and considerably more of Earth’s molten mantle would be “splashed” into the space along with the rest of Theia.

Most interestingly, the ICC study suggested that contrary to common thinking, the debris cloud would have sufficient enough velocity imparted to it that it would start out dense enough and rotating about itself fast enough to coalesce extremely rapidly and without being ripped apart by Earth’s gravity. And by rapidly, the ICC suggested the core of the Moon could have formed within a day of the collision – if not in hours.

Now the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and the University of Arizona – two of the most globally-respected space research institutes – have published a study which, whilst acknowledging some of their modelling accounts for the Moon forming over a much more extended period of at least hundreds of thousands of years, very strongly supports the ICC’s simulations for a very rapid formation of the lunar core – potentially in as little of 5 or 6 hours after Theia’s destruction.

There is just one slight wrinkle with both the SwRI and ICC studies however: while both allow for material from Earth to form a proportion of the Moon’s make-up, they don’t explain why lunar surface rocks – even allowing for early volcanism on the Moon throwing up material from deep within it which might have originated from that collision debris cloud – are so very similar to Earth’s mantle rocks. As such, there is still more to learn about how the Moon as we know it today came to be. But the idea that its core came into existence in mere hours is intriguing.

Rocket Lab Launches GAO Protest

Earlier in September, NASA awarded a US $700 million contract to Blue Origin to build the Mars Telecommunication Network (MTN) – which despite having “network” in the name, is in fact a single satellite. The spacecraft is intended to be NASA’s next generation communications relay between missions operating on and around Mars and Earth.

Blue Origin had submitted a proposal for MTN in competition with New Zealand / US Rocket Lab – and the latter has now lodged a formal protest with the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) over how the contract was awarded.

On the surface, there is much that is puzzling about the decision to go with Blue Origin:

• Blue Origin has never actually built a satellite; Rocket Lab not only builds satellites for customers, it currently has two satellites en-route to Mars forming the NASA Escapade mission.
• Blue Origin has no experience with communications satellites other than launching them. Rocket Lab has built (and initially operated on behalf of clients) no fewer than eight communications satellites to date.
• Rocket Lab has a reputation for delivering satellites on-budget and on time. Blue Origin has no such reputation.
• Rocket Lab proposed developing, building and delivering MTN by 2028; Blue Origin is targeting 2030.
• Blue Origin proposes using their Blue Ring orbital vehicle as the MTN satellite “bus” (providing power, propulsion, etc.), although this has yet to fly beyond a demonstrator version. Rocket Lab already has a proven satellite bus in the form of Photon with, at the time of writing, three successful operational missions under its belt in addition to demonstrator flights.

The only significant advantage Blue Origin had going into the bid process was their New Glenn booster which, despite the NG-4 mishap, has successfully flown 3 times and is fully capable of delivering MTN to Mars. Rocket Lab would have to rely on their upcoming Neutron rocket, which has yet to fly.

In protesting the NASA decision to go with Blue Origin, Rocket Lab cites inconsistencies with the eligibility criteria for bids, as mandated by Congress in providing NASA with the MTN budget. However, the company has, understandably, refused to air what these inconsistencies might be in the court of public opinion.

For Blue Origin, this is very much a case of the shoe being on the other foot. In 2021, the company filed a protest with (initially) the GAO and then later in federal court, over NASA’s decision to both allow SpaceX form a late entry bid for the agency’s lunar Human Landing System (HLS) vehicle, before awarding the contract to SpaceX whilst denying a second HLS contact as agreed (a decision later reversed by Congress). Blue Origin ultimately lost both the GAO protest and the court case.

Whether Rocket Lab will go so far as federal court should GAO refuse to take action on the contract award remains to be seen. But contrary to social media sentiment against Rocket Lab, as noted above, the company does have some good standing on which to protest the decision.

Video Updates

Roman Grace Telescope

As the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (or more simply, the Roman Space Telescope or RST) continues towards its rendezvous with a halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L₂ position, let’s take time to look at the two primary instruments on the observatory and how they work by means of two short videos from NASA published a few years ago.

In the first, the CGI – or Coronagraph Instrument – and its ability to reveal the light of distant exoplanets to us is explored. In short, this instrument will enable scientists will be able to see the visible light reflected by planets that are older, colder, and in closer orbits than the hot, young super-Jupiters we’ve thus far been able to detect. CGI will conduct a series of pre-planned observations for a total of three months spread across the mission’s first year-and-a-half of operations.

The Wide Field Instrument (WFI) will enable RST to capture images of deep space around 100 times larger than those captured by the Advanced Camera on the Hubble Space Telescope. The WFI uses a total of 18 4K sensors and a short focal length for its images, and will be able to image and catalogue 50 times as much sky in its 5-year primary mission as Hubble covered in its first 30 years of operation. RST will thus carry out a complete sky survey 1,000 times faster than Hubble but with the same sensitivity and infrared resolution.

BepiColumbo: 8 Years in Under 5 Minutes

In my previous Space Sunday article, I wrote about BepiColombo, the joint European Space Agency (ESA) / Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission to Mercury, which is now – after eight years, nine billion kilometres and nine planetary fly-bys – soon to enter orbit around Mercury.

A couple of days after that article, ESA released a short video compressing the journey down to less than 5 minutes. The film has been made from images captured by the 3 monitoring cameras (M-Cams) mounted on the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) used to provide propulsions and power to the spacecraft throughout its journey, and which – as I reported – has now been successfully jettisoned, its job done.

The 3 M-Cams were designed to monitor elements of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), the main science vehicle being transported to Mercury by MTM. As such, they have fixed fields of view, reflected in the video below. Within it, and on the left are images from M-Cam 1, monitoring the solar array; in the centre are images from M-Cam 2, monitoring the instrument booms, and on the right, M-Cam 3, monitoring the MPO’s high-gain communications antenna.

Whilst fixed in position, all three cameras also caught sight of Earth, Venus and Mercury during the mission’s fly-bys, and the video present all nine in the following order:

• 0:38: Earth fly-by, April 10, 2020; visible as a white crescent on M-Cam 3 (right side images) as the spacecraft passed around the night side of the planet.
• 1:11: 1st Venus fly-by, October 15, 2020; initially visible as a small disk on M-Cam 3, then moving to larger disk on M-Cam 2 (centre).
• 1:24: 2nd Venus fly-by, August 10, 2021; briefly visible on M-Cam 1 (left) before filling M-Cam 2’s field of view and then “looping” (due to vehicle reorienting itself) and diminishing in M-Cam 3’s view.
• 1:32: 1st Mercury fly-by, October 1, 2021; visible in M-Cam 2 and then M-Cam 3.
• 1:48: 2nd Mercury fly-by, June 23, 2022; predominantly visible on M-Cam 2.
• 2:15: 3rd Mercury fly-by June 19, 2023; initially visible on M-Cam 1 during the approach phase, then on M-Cam 3 as the spacecraft departs.
• 2:41: 4th Mercury fly-by, September 4, 2024; near-continuous view of departure, M-Cam2 and M-Cam 3.
• 2:55 and 2:58: 5th Mercury fly-by, December 1, 2024; initially and briefly visible across the bottom of M-Cam 2 during approach, then briefly visible on M-Cam 2 and 3 at long-range during departure.
• 3:02: 6th Mercury fly-by, January 8, 2025; initially visible moving across M-Cam 1 and M-Cam 2 at a distance, then more closely in both cameras with overlapping images.

Note that the MTM camera did not have shutter, so there are occasions when white streaks appear on some images (notably M-Cam 3). Also not the changing levels of light on things like the solar array and instrument booms is the result of the spacecraft’s changing orientation relative to the Sun, while the high gain communications antenna can clearly be seen in motion on M-Cam 3’s images as it maintains a fix on Earth whilst the spacecraft periodically re-orients itself for things like engine burns and cooling.

The subject of Jupiter’s moon Europa is rather hot at the moment. With two major missions currently en-route to Jupiter to study this icy world – NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which will focus entirely on Europa, and the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission, there have been various science papers of late on the subject of liquid water on Europa – two of which I covered most recently at the start of the year.

Those two studies directly speculated on the opportunities for Europa – assuming it does have a relatively warm, liquid ocean sitting under this icy crust – to be the abode of basic life, and with somewhat differing outcomes.

While it seems likely that Europa does – through a combination of interior heating and a similar kind of tidal flexing experienced by volcanically active neighbouring Io – have sufficient heat to give rise to a liquid water ocean under its surface, the problems remains of how to get down to that ocean and probe for signs of basic life.

The most common idea for this has been to actually land on Europa and drill down into the ice to obtain deep core samples which might contain minerals and other deposits indicative that the Moon has potentially habitable zones in its ocean – or even to get an automated mini-sub to actually explore the waters under the ice.

The problem here is that we now know that the ice of Europa’s crust is around 30 km thick – that’s not something easily drilled through to any significant depth. Such a thickness of ice also casts doubt on the idea that – based on images and data obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope (2012/13) and the Galileo spacecraft (1995-2003) respectively – water is escaping up from the ocean through crack in the ice  as water vapour geysers.

As a result, the focus of efforts to try to reach liquid water on Europa and gather samples or remote analysis shifted to trying to analyse what appear to be reservoirs of water actually within the ice crust itself, in the belief that these “lakes” were being created by warm water forcing its way up through faults and cracks in the ice and then spreading horizontally through the ice strata – and that this might also be causing the geysers of water vapour believed to have been seen.

However, more recently, revisiting the data from Hubble and Galileo has cast doubt on the idea that Europa is geysering water vapour into space. On top of this, a new study led by scientists from Rutgers University now casts credible doubt on the idea of warm water pushing its way up through 20-30km of ice so as to be close enough to the surface so that when the surface ice breaks as a result of the flexing mentioned above, it could escape as a vast outgassing of water vapour.

The models previously used for determining whether warm water could form conduits up through Europa’s ice from the ocean and then exploit weaknesses within the strata of ice were based on the mechanics of magma here on Earth, which operates in a fairly uniform manner.  Given the apparent nature of cryovolcanism among various bodies around the solar system, this idea of uniform action appeared reasonable.

The Rutgers’ study however, looked at the behaviour water is volcanic-like systems and found that its behaviour is far more turbulent than found with denser magma, with convection currents being far more extensive, particularly as warm warm came into direct contact with ice of a density  similar to that measured on Europa.

So instead of the water simple melting and forcing its way up through cracks it forced into conduits, the Rutgers study found the the water would quickly start forming convention currents: the warm water rising up into cracks, with its outer edges rapidly cooling as it made contact with the ice, forming a convection current of rising and descending water – with the latter carrying ice crystals melted off the the ice before the water cooled. These crystals would then clump and cool the water further, eventually choking the entire flow long before the water could rise up through the ice far enough so it could form a reservoir which a) would remain liquid and b) be available to escape as a geyser if the remaining ice above it cracked open.

But given there is data indicating bodies of water are suspended within Europa’s ice, and if they are not formed by warm water forcing its way up from below, what is forming it? The Rutgers’ study suggests a simple, somewhat elegant solution: as noted, Europa is in tidal flux and subject to interior heating; its curst is cracked and line as a result of stress fracturing from this motion. This cracking and fracturing will result in frictional rubbing between different elements of ice and different densities of the ice strata – and friction melts ice.

If the Rutger’s study is correct, it would suggest that trying to obtain samples of any water trapped within Europa’s icy crust is unlikely to reveal much about the potential of the underlying ocean having all the mineral and chemical elements present to give life a kick-start. This does not negate the study of Europa as a whole; there is still much to find out about it – including whether or not the ocean believed to exist there is actually liquid water (rather than, say, an icy slush) – it just underscores the fact that nothing about Europa can really be taken for granted.

Imaging the Eclipse

August 12 saw a total / partial eclipse visible across the north Atlantic and a good portion of western Europe. Whilst the path of totality was predominantly lay across the Atlantic, it did touch eastern Greenland, western Iceland and part of northern Spain and Portugal, with up to 98% partiality witnessed from parts of northern Europe.

Here are some images of the event which have been publicly released.

Obviously, those sitting along the line of totality got the greatest views of the eclipse – bot that’s not to say those only witnessing a partial eclipse missed out, as “Mr photon” from Switzerland demonstrated, with the assistance of a local hot air ballooning event!

Long March 7A Explodes After launch

Just to show western rockets have exclusivity on exploding, on August 10, 2026, China suffered a failure with a Long March 7A booster.

A variant of the Long March 7 (CZ-7) workhorse, capable of lobbing just under 14 tonnes to low Earth orbit (LEO) and 7 tonnes to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), the CZ-7A was first launched in 2020 and up until the August 10 launch, had a record for 16 successful flights out of 17 launches.

The launch was intended to deliver a Zhongxing-4B telecommunications and broadband internet satellite to GTO, the rocket lifting-off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site, Hainan province at 12:00 noon UTC on August 10. The flight appeared to be proceeding well until 85 seconds after launch, when the vehicle exploded.

It is not clear exactly what happened, but the timing of the flight suggests that the explosion occurred as the vehicle was experiencing “max-Q” – when the structure is facing the maximum in aerodynamic stresses as it accelerates and tries to punch its way through the denser atmosphere. Some reports suggest that this might have resulted in the forward, upper section of the rocket suffering a structural failure, however, amateur footage taken of the launch appears to show an initial explosive flare near the base of the vehicle, which appears to have split it in two, prior to a second explosion occurring.

This might be significant, as the very first flight of the CZ-7A in 2020 is said to have been result of a pressurisation failure in one of the rocket’s four strap-on boosters – although that particular vehicle loss came some 168 seconds into the flight.

The Long March 7 family has an interesting operation in regards to its core stage and side boosters. While such arrangements are common in rocket systems, in most, the side boosters tend to be jettisoned once they’ve carried out the work of initially accelerating the booster and getting it through “max-Q”, lightening the load and allowing the first stage to continue to power the rocket until its fuel is expended. However, with the Long March 7, the side boosters and core stage are jettisoned as a single unit, generally around 170-175 seconds into the flight.

At the time of writing, some 5 days after the vehicle loss, the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) has not commented on the event, other than to state it is under investigation. Whether or not any reason for the vehicle loss will be given in the future is unclear – while there is speculation as to the cause of the loss of the first CZ-7A in 2020, China has never officially revealed the cause of that loss, and the same could be seen with this vehicle as well.

In 2019/2020 I covered, the excitement caused by the apparent and sudden dimming of Betelgeuse, the variable red supergiant in the constellation of Orion, when the star dropped from being the 10th brightest object in the night skies to the 27th before it recovered in early 2020. At the time there was much speculation on whether we were seeing the first signs the star had undergone a supernova explosion some 600 years ago (roughly the time it takes the light from the star to reach us). Obviously, this wasn’t the case, and the “great dimming” as it is now called was eventually pinned on something more mundane.

To put it simply, massive red giants like Betelgeuse are comparatively short-lived, in the order of 10-20 million years, rapidly burning through their stocks of hydrogen, and successively heavier elements in turn. As they do so – and before they reach a point where the fusion process can no longer be sustained as the energy to power it exceeds the amount of energy produced by it, causing the star’s core to collapse under its own gravity in less than a second and then immediately exploding outward again in a supernova – they go through some notable changes. Firstly, as each fusion cycle – helium, carbon, etc. – occurs at higher and higher temperatures, the red giant massively expands into a red supergiant. Secondly, they become violent, throwing off massive amounts of super-heated gas.

Betelgeuse, at around 8.5 million years of age is well into both of these phases; it expended its supply of hydrogen a very long time ago, expanding to its present size  of around 600-700 times bigger than the Sun. and it is periodically throwing off vast amounts of super-heated gas into space. With regards to the latter, it is now largely agreed that it was one of these clouds of material which caused the illusion of the “great /dimming”.

Thrown out by Betelgeuse so long ago it had long since cooled to the point it could not be seen from Earth, the cloud gradually drifted in front of our view of Betelgeuse during 2019, giving the impression the star was dimming dramatically. Then, as the dust then moved out of our line-of-sight with Betelgeuse in early 2020, the star appeared to return to its expected luminosity.

As mundane as the explanation for the “great dimming” might be, it nevertheless caused a renewed interest in another of Betelgeuse’s mysteries: does it have a companion star orbiting it? It’s a question astronomers have been trying to answer for almost 100 years; but the very nature of Betelgeuse – its pulsing variability which makes even accurately determining its distance from Earth difficult (it’s thought to be about 640 light-years away, with a margin of error of +/- 146 light years); the huge and glowing masses of super-heated gases surrounding it, etc., – make finding any companion exceptionally difficult.

However, 2024 two separate studies carried were out in the wake of the “great dimming”, examining the gas clouds and the star’s coronasphere to see if there was evidence for either being affected the mass of a stellar object passing through them. Both studies yielded positive results but came to very different conclusions. The first study concluded the companion was either a white dwarf stellar remnant roughly the size of Earth or a neutron star some 10-20 km across. Either way, it likely had a mass roughly equitable to the Sun. However, the second study concluded the companion was almost equitable in size and mass to the Sun, and orbiting Betelgeuse so close it will likely be consumed by the larger star within 10,000 years.

Following up on these studies in 2025, a NASA team observed Betelgeuse using the Gemini North Observatory in Hawai’i. They pretty much confirmed the second of the 2024 studies: there did appear to be a companion star orbiting very close to Betelgeuse; however it appeared to be an F-type pre-main sequence star with roughly 1.5 to 1.6 times the mass of the Sun. Such was the NASA team’s confidence in their findings, they informally named the star: Siwarha, meaning “her bracelet” in Arabic, reflecting the fact that Betelgeuse means “the hand of al-Jawzā”. The name was subsequently accepted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

More recently, a team of astronomers used the data from the NASA study to calculate where Siwarha would be at the furthest distance its orbit would carry from Betelgeuse as seen from Earth, and the time at which this would occur. They used these calculations to direct the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) cluster in Chile to observe Betelgeuse at the specified time to try to both image Siwraha and gather more data that might be used to better characterise it.

The results were both satisfying and a little mystifying. On the one hand, Siwraha was exactly where the calculations said it would be, and the team were able to image it. However, the data gathered by the VLT’s instruments suggest Siwarha is a B-type main-sequence star some three times the mass of the Sun and between 2 and six times its size – in other words, very different to the star indicated by the NASA study.

There could be many reasons for this; as noted, trying to identify a stellar body which would effectively be little more than a marble compared to Betelgeuse’s soccer ball, and in so dynamic a region of space, isn’t easy. So as the VLT team note, more observations are required to better understand Siwarha’s nature. But in the meantime, it would seem that the 100-year-old question on whether or not Betelgeuse has a companion has been affirmatively answered.

And what of the potential of Betelgeuse going supernova? Given its age and characteristics, astronomers agree that – if it hasn’t happened in the last 600-ish years – it will happen in the next 100,000. However, if it has happened within the last 600-ish years, our first indication will not be a sudden blossoming of light in the night (or even daytime, it will be that bright) sky. Instead, the first signs of its supernova will come invisibly in the form of a blast of neutrinos hitting a global network of detectors called the SuperNova Early Warning System (SNEWS) located deep underground.

This is because when the core of  a star destined to go supernova collapses, it generates a massive burst of neutrinos ahead of the actual supernova event. These travel outward at almost the speed of light, unhampered by the intervening matter of the the star. The light and energy created by the supernova, however, does have to propagate up through those layers of stellar matter, taking several hours to do so. Thus, this neutrino blast will reach us hours ahead of any light from the supernova, and SNEWS will be able to trace their point of origin.

Updates

The Rescuer in need of Rescuing

In June I covered the daring attempt to rescue a NASA satellite – the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory – from re-entering Earth’s atmosphere in October 2026 and burning up, by using another spacecraft to link up with it and gently push it up to a higher orbital altitude (see: Space Sunday: NASA – a rescue attempt, costs & infrastructure).

The mission got off to a good start. The rescue vehicle, built by Arizona-based Katalyst Space Technologies and called LINK, carried into space by a Pegasus XL air-launched rocket, successfully reached its initial orbit. Once there, it was able to deploy its solar panels for power and enter a period of check-out, calibration and commissioning before starting on its way to rendezvous with the Swift Observatory. However, on July 28th, NASA announced things had gone a little sideways: two out of the three reaction wheels on the spacecraft have ceased functioning, and its cold gas thrusters are also suffering a “loss of functionality”.

Reaction wheels are a means to precisely control  the orientation of satellites and spacecraft where the use of thrusters isn’t precise enough and / or could lead to excessive propellant depletion. The failure aboard LINK means it is now slowly spinning and only able to achieve intermittent communications with Earth. Further, the issue with the cold gas thrusters means that these cannot be reliably employed to slow the spin and correct LINK’s orientation.

At the time of writing, both Katalyst and NASA are working through the issues in order to recover the spacecraft. At the same time, and as a back-up measure, work is being carried out to reconfigure the software controlling LINK’s more powerful and propulsive ion thrusters so that if necessary, they might be used in a manner similar the vehicle’s cold gas thrusters, firing short, gentle bursts at appropriate times in the spacecraft’s slow tumble and bring it under control.

And in a twist of history, in 2022, the Swift Observatory also suffered a failure within its reaction wheels, causing NASA to place it in a “safe” mode until the matter was resolved and the observatory could resume normal operations. Hopefully, the same will be true for LINK.

Thar’ She Floats!

It’s probably more than apparent that I’m (one of many) not convinced that SpaceX’s Starship / Super Heavy system is actually a viable commercial launch system with a genuine ROI. It is most certainly not the vehicle that will “take humanity to Mars” or anywhere else in the wider solar system or realistically deliver on any of the other promises made by the SpaceX CEO. However, credit does fall where credit is due.

As I covered in my previous Space Sunday update, the system completed its 13th integrated flight test (IFT-13) on July 24th which achieved the majority of its stated goals, potentially clearing the way for an orbital launch attempt with IFT-14. However, perhaps the most remarkable thing about IFT-13 is the fact that on splashing down in the Indian Ocean, Starship S40 didn’t exit this world by blowing up in the manner of its predecessors, but gently keeled over to float on its back.

And it is still afloat, which is equally remarkable, and speaks to its overall structural integrity. Having taken the time to careful study the vehicle following its splashdown – particularly the condition of its heat shield tiles – SpaceX has indicated it may try to attempt a recovery of the 52-metre long, 100-tonne vehicle by towing to Australia – a distance of around 1,200 km – where it can be transferred to a suitable ocean-going barge for transfer back to the United States!

ESCAPADE’s Long Road to Mars Captures the Moon and Earth

In November 2025, and on its second flight, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket sent two small NASA satellites built by Rocket Lab on behalf of NASA on their (indirect) way to Mars (see: Space Sunday: New Glenn “welds” it on second flight!).

The mission, called ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) is intended to orbit Mars with the two satellites (informally called Gold and Blue) in a study of the planet’s magnetosphere and how solar wind contributed to the loss of most of the planet’s atmosphere. However, under the original plan, the two 1/2 tonne satellites were supposed to have been launched with NASA’s 16 Psyche mission in 2023, effectively hitching a ride with that spacecraft which would make a fly-by of Mars. However, changes to the 16 Psyche mission meant ESCAPADE could no long launch with it, and so it eventually departed Earth outside of the normal 26-month optimal Earth-Mars launch windows.

This meant that as launched the two satellites could not reach Mars directly. Instead, they were placed on a looping flight around the Sun-Earth L₂ position before swinging back towards the Earth-Moon system in first of two fly-bys. This took place in early July 2026, and was used to calibrate the imaging systems on both vehicles, by capturing images of the Earth-Moon system in natural light, ultra violet and infrared.

Both Earth and the Moon are 8% sunlit crescents in the image, with the Sun just out of frame to the observer’s right. The image also presents a comparison of albedo (reflectivity), with Earth is around 30% reflective overall thanks to sunlight being reflected off of the planet’s cloud tops. Meanwhile the Moon is a dull 7%.

When seen in the infrared, the difference is more apparent: even the side of Earth apparently in shadow shines with a temperature range of -43^o and -10^o, which might sound low in this age of global warming, but remember it is the night side of the planet and includes the temperature of the oceans there. By contrast, the Moon’s shadowed side is -173.3^o.

Currently, both satellites are on the outward leg of a shorter loop away from Earth. They will return in November and perform a close gravity-assist flyby which will set them on course to reach orbit around Mars in September 2027.