Watch: How UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory leads NASA missions like ESCAPADE
The University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory is managing the ESCAPADE mission, which uses two satellites to study Mars' atmosphere and magnetosphere. The mission aims to provide insights into how Mars lost its atmosphere over billions of years.
Why it matters
Understanding the evolution of Mars' atmosphere is critical for planning future human exploration and understanding planetary climate change.
On any given day at the Space Sciences Laboratory, engineers may be downloading data from satellites orbiting the moon , monitoring instruments capturing geomagnetic storms on the sun or scheduling engines to fire and propel a spacecraft toward Mars.
Perched high in the hills above the UC Berkeley campus, the 67-year-old lab is one of only two university-based centers in the U.S. capable of managing the entire life cycle of a satellite mission. SSL currently controls nine spacecraft out of its Mission Operations Center. Over the course of the lab’s history, scientists and engineers — aided by hundreds of Berkeley students — have designed, built and operated instruments for more than 100 satellite projects to explore our solar system.
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