ESCAPADE: A twin small spacecraft mission to unveil Mars' hybrid magnetospher

原　拓也
University of California, Berkeley

ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) is a Category 3 Class D Tailored small satellite mission selected under the SIMPLEX program and funded by NASA's Heliophysics division. ESCAPADE is a twin-spacecraft Mars mission concept that will revolutionize our understanding of how upstream solar wind momentum and energy flows throughout Mars' unique hybrid magnetosphere to drive ion and neutral escape to space, two processes which have helped shape Mars' climate evolution over solar system history. ESCAPADE will measure magnetic field strength and topology, ion distributions as well as suprathermal electron flows and thermal electron and ion densities, from precessing elliptical orbits. Our strategically-designed 11-months, 2-part scientific campaigns of temporally and spatially-separated multipoint measurements in different regions of Mars' diverse plasma environment, will allow the cause-and-effect of solar wind control of ion and neutral escape to be unraveled for the first time. ESCAPADE is due to launch in mid-2024, which is similar to Japanese MMX (Mars Moons eXploration) mission. This presentation will share the overview and current status of the ESCAPADE mission, and show the upcoming "golden" era that the multiple spacecraft (e.g., ESA's Mars Express (MEX), NASA's MAVEN, ESCAPADE, and JAXA's MMX, etc.), can simultaneously measure Mars' unique hybrid magnetosphere and ionosphere in the late-2020s.

New Bldg. A 2F Conf. room A (1257),　Via Zoom