NASA's ESCAPADE mission, featuring two spacecraft to study Mars' upper atmosphere, avoided a lengthy delay through innovative orbital planning. The probes will launch aboard Blue Origin's second New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, entering a loiter orbit to await the optimal path to Mars. This approach demonstrates flexible astrodynamics amid launch setbacks.
The ESCAPADE mission, short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, consists of two identical spacecraft designed to investigate how Mars' upper atmosphere interacts with the solar wind. Originally planned for a direct six-to-nine-month journey during the 2024 Mars launch window, the mission faced delays when Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket was not ready. The first New Glenn flight occurred in January 2025, pushing the launch to November 2025.
To bridge the gap until the next alignment in late 2026, trajectory experts devised a 'kidney bean'-shaped staging orbit, a libration path leading to the L2 Lagrange point beyond the Moon. “ESCAPADE is pursuing a very unusual trajectory in getting to Mars,” said Rob Lillis, the mission’s principal investigator from the University of California, Berkeley. “We’re launching outside the typical Hohmann transfer windows, which occur every 25 or 26 months. We are using a very flexible mission design approach where we go into a loiter orbit around Earth in order to sort of wait until Earth and Mars are lined up correctly in November of next year to go to Mars.”
The spacecraft, built by Rocket Lab, will depart Earth when Mars is over 220 million miles away on the opposite side of the Solar System. They are set to fire engines on November 7 and 9, 2026, for the journey to Mars. This path increases risks, including higher radiation exposure and greater fuel consumption, but NASA deemed it acceptable for the low-cost mission, budgeted under $80 million.
Blue Origin secured a $20 million contract for the launch, leveraging the New Glenn's capacity despite it being overkill for the one-ton payload. The rocket's second flight carries elevated failure risks, as it lacks certification from NASA or the US Space Force. Launch is scheduled for Sunday during an 88-minute window starting at 2:45 pm EST (19:45 UTC) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, with a 65 percent chance of favorable weather.
Blue Origin aims to recover the booster on its ship 'Jacklyn' in the Atlantic, after a failed attempt in January. “We’ve incorporated a number of changes to our propellant management system... to increase our likelihood of landing that booster on this mission,” said Laura Maginnis, vice president of New Glenn mission management. The mission's flexibility could enable future swarms of Mars spacecraft outside traditional windows.