NASA goes on an ESCAPADE – twin small, low-cost orbiters will examine Mars’ atmosphere

Imagine a time when hundreds of spacecraft explore the solar system and beyond. This is the future that NASA’s ESCAPADE, or Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, mission will help unlock: a future in which small, low-cost spacecraft allow researchers to quickly learn, iterate, and advance technology and science.

The ESCAPADE mission launched on November 13, 2025 on a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket, sending two small orbiters to Mars to study its atmosphere. As aerospace engineers, we are excited about this mission because not only will it deliver major scientific breakthroughs while advancing the space capabilities of small spacecraft, but it will also travel to the Red Planet on an innovative new trajectory.

The ESCAPADE mission is actually made up of two spacecraft instead of one. Two identical spacecraft will take measurements simultaneously, improving science. These spacecraft are smaller than those used in the past, each about the size of a photocopier, thanks in part to the current trend toward miniaturization in the space industry. Doing more with less is very important for space exploration, because it typically takes most of a spacecraft’s mass just to get it where you want it to go.

Having two spaceships also serves as an insurance policy in case one of them doesn’t perform as expected. Even if it fails completely, researchers can still do science with a single working spacecraft. This redundancy allows each spacecraft to be built more affordably than in the past, as copies allow for greater acceptance of risk.

Study the history of Mars

Long before the twin ESCAPADE Blue and Gold spacecraft were ready to head into space – billions of years ago to be more precise – Mars had a much thicker atmosphere than it does today. This atmosphere would have allowed liquids to flow across its surface, creating channels and ravines that scientists can still observe today.

But where has most of this atmosphere gone? Its loss made Mars the cold, dry world it is today, with surface atmospheric pressure less than 1% that of Earth.

Mars also once had a magnetic field, like Earth’s, that helped protect its atmosphere. This atmosphere and magnetic field would have been essential for any life that might have existed in early Mars.

ESCAPADE will measure the remnants of this magnetic field preserved by ancient rocks and study the flow and energy of Mars’ atmosphere and how it interacts with the solar wind, the flow of particles that the sun emits with light. These measurements will help reveal where the atmosphere has gone and how quickly Mars is still losing it today.

Weatherproof space on a budget

Space is not a friendly place. It’s largely vacuum, that is, mostly empty, without the gas molecules that create pressure and allow you to breathe or transfer heat. These molecules keep things from getting too hot or too cold. In space, without pressure, a spacecraft can easily become too hot or too cold, depending on whether it is in sunlight or shadow.

In addition, the Sun and other more distant astronomical objects emit radiation that living beings do not experience on Earth. The earth’s magnetic field protects you from the worst radiation. So when humans or our robotic representatives leave Earth, our spaceship must survive in this extreme environment not present on Earth.

ESCAPADE will overcome these challenges on a shoestring budget totaling US$80 million. It’s a lot of money, but for a mission to another planet, it doesn’t cost much. It has kept costs low by leveraging commercial technologies for deep space exploration, which is now possible thanks to previous investments in basic research.

For example, the GRAIL mission, launched in 2011, previously used two spacecraft, Ebb and Flow, to map the Moon’s gravity fields. ESCAPADE takes this concept to another world, Mars, and costs a fraction of the price of GRAIL.

Led by Rob Lillis of the UC Berkeley Space Science Laboratory, this collaboration between spacecraft builders Rocket Lab, trajectory specialists Advanced Space LLC and launch provider Blue Origin – all commercial partners funded by NASA – aims to show that deep space exploration is now faster, more agile and more affordable than ever.

How will ESCAPADE arrive on Mars?

ESCAPADE will also use a new trajectory to get to Mars. Imagine being an archer in the Olympics. To hit a target, you must shoot an arrow through a 15-inch (40-centimeter) circle at a distance of 300 feet or 90 meters. Now imagine that the target represents Mars. To hit it from Earth, you’ll need to shoot an arrow into the same 15-inch target from a distance of over 13 miles, or 22 kilometers. You will also need to shoot the arrow in a curved path so that it goes around the Sun.

Additionally, Mars will not be on target when you shoot the arrow. You need to aim for where Mars will be in 10 months. This is the problem faced by the designers of the ESCAPADE mission. The amazing thing is that physical laws and forces of nature are so predictable that this wasn’t even the hardest problem for the ESCAPADE mission to solve.

It takes energy to move from one place to another. To get from Earth to Mars, a spacecraft must carry the energy it needs, in the form of rocket fuel, much like gasoline in a car. As a result, a high percentage of the total launch mass must serve as fuel for the journey.

When moving toward Mars orbit from Earth orbit, between 80 and 85 percent of the spacecraft’s mass must be propulsive, meaning that little mass is dedicated to the part of the spacecraft that performs all the experiments. This problem makes it important to integrate as many capabilities as possible into the rest of the spacecraft. For ESCAPADE, the propellant only represents about 65% of the spacecraft’s mass.

The ESCAPADE route is particularly fuel-efficient. First, Blue and Gold will travel to the L2 Lagrange point, one of five places where the gravitational forces of the Sun and Earth cancel each other out. Then, after about a year, during which they will collect monitoring data from the Sun, they will fly past Earth, using its gravitational field to get a boost. This way they will arrive on Mars in about 10 more months.

This new approach has another advantage, beyond the need to carry less fuel: trips from Earth to Mars are generally favorable for saving fuel approximately every 26 months due to the relative position of the two planets. However, this new trajectory makes the departure time more flexible. Future cargo and human missions could use a similar trajectory to make more frequent, less time-limited trips to Mars.

ESCAPADE testifies to a new era in the field of spaceflight. For a new generation of scientists and engineers, ESCAPADE is not just a mission: it is a model for a new collaborative era of exploration and discovery.

This article was updated on November 13, 2025 to reflect the date and success of ESCAPADE’s launch.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent, nonprofit news organization that brings you trusted facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Christopher Carr, Georgia Institute of Technology and Glenn Lightsey, Georgia Institute of Technology

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Christopher E. Carr is part of the science team for the Rocket Lab mission to Venus (funded by Schmidt Sciences and NASA). More information is available at https://www.morningstarmissions.space/rocketlabmissiontovenus

Glenn Lightsey does not work for, consult, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond his academic appointment.