ESCAPADE (twin orbiters 'Blue' and 'Gold')

Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers

Agency

NASA (UC Berkeley SSL; spacecraft by Rocket Lab)

Country

🇺🇸 USA

Launched

2025-11-13

Status

Ongoing

Instruments

3 instrument suites per spacecraft

Magnetometer, electrostatic analyzer (ions/electrons), and Langmuir probe suite on each of the twin spacecraft

Orbit

In transit — Earth gravity assist November 2026; Mars orbit insertion September 2027 into complementary elliptical science orbits

Key Findings

1.First dual-spacecraft mission to Mars — twin Rocket Lab-built orbiters will make simultaneous two-point measurements of the Martian magnetosphere
2.Launched November 13, 2025 on the second flight of Blue Origin's New Glenn (NG-2) — the first NASA science mission on New Glenn
3.Will quantify how the solar wind strips the Martian atmosphere, extending the (now-ended) MAVEN escape-rate record with two-point coverage
4.Low-cost SIMPLEx-class mission (~$80M class) led by UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory

Mission Outcome

ESCAPADE launched on November 13, 2025, aboard New Glenn NG-2 and is in transit: the twin spacecraft loiter near Earth before a November 2026 Earth gravity assist, with Mars orbit insertion planned for September 2027. Once in their complementary orbits, Blue and Gold will make the first simultaneous two-point measurements of solar-wind-driven atmospheric escape at Mars.

Sources

[1] NASA — retrieved 2026-06-12
[2] UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory — retrieved 2026-06-12

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