Rocket Lab wins contract to design twin Mars spacecraft for NASA - Space.com

The California-based company, which will send a NASA cubesat mission to the moon this fall and aims to  launch its own private life-hunting Venus mission in 2023, has been awarded a contract to design the twin spacecraft for NASA's potential ESCAPADE Mars mission.

Rocket Lab will design the ESCAPADE duo using its Photon spacecraft bus, company representatives announced today (June 15). .

"This is a hugely promising mission that will deliver big science in a small package," Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck said in a statement.

"Our Photon spacecraft for ESCAPADE will demonstrate a more cost-effective approach to planetary exploration that will increase the science community’s access to our solar system for the better.".

If ESCAPADE is selected, it will likely fly in 2024 as a rideshare payload aboard a commercial rocket procured by NASA, Rocket Lab representatives said.

ESCAPADE was originally slated to launch next year as a rideshare aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket along with NASA's Psyche asteroid mission.

We should learn ESCAPADE's fate soon: NASA will perform a preliminary design review of the potential mission this month and a "confirmation review" in July, Rocket Lab representatives said in the same statement!

Rocket Lab has already launched two test versions of Photon to Earth orbit, and the satellite bus will carry NASA's tiny CAPSTONE ("Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment") spacecraft to lunar orbit later this year.

The company also soon plans to use Photon for a privately funded Venus mission or missions, which Beck has said will hunt for signs of life in the planet's atmosphere. .