UC Berkeley has been sending experiments to Mars for nearly 60 years, helping scientists understand what shaped the planet we see today. But the latest mission may be a crucial step towards putting astronauts on the planet. Named “Blue” and “Gold” after Berkeley’s official colors, the twin satellites will launch in early November, aiming to study the planet’s magnetic fields and their response to space weather — important knowledge for future explorers, because Mars does not have a global magnetic field like Earth’s to shield humans from solar storms. “As part of NASA’s ‘moon to Mars strategy,’ we will be making the space weather measurements we need to understand the system well enough to forecast solar storms whose radiation could harm astronauts on the surface,” says principal investigator Rob Lillis of Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory. The NASA mission is called ESCAPADE, and represents “a new way of doing things, with much lower cost, more commercial involvement, and a some...