The satellites, named Blue and Gold, were designed and built by Rocket Lab for NASA and the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory. Once at Mars, the two will work in tandem to measure how the solar wind strips ions from the planet’s upper atmosphere, data that will help scientists reconstruct Mars’ atmospheric escape history, characterize its space weather environment, and inform planning for future human exploration.<\/p>\n
ESCAPADE launched on November 13, 2025, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Because Earth and Mars were not aligned for a direct transfer, Blue and Gold first entered a loiter orbit around the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2. The orbit was timed to bring them back to Earth for the gravity assist that has now sent them toward Mars. During the nearly yearlong loiter phase, Rocket Lab and UC Berkeley operators completed commissioning, and each vehicle performed multiple trajectory correction maneuvers that kept the spacecraft on a path through Earth’s magnetotail, giving the science team an early opportunity to operate its instruments.<\/p>\n
Each spacecraft performed its TMI burn during a powered Earth gravity assist, swinging past Earth and firing a single, continuous burn for approximately 10 minutes. The maneuvers were executed autonomously, with Rocket Lab and UC Berkeley operators overseeing both. Rather than relying on a launch vehicle’s upper stage, Blue and Gold performed their own departure burns, a capability that required a powerful onboard propulsion system and precise trajectory planning. The burn could not be split into smaller segments, and each spacecraft had to sustain a precisely controlled engine firing. Both burns were executed with greater than 99 percent overall accuracy and a final attitude error of less than 1 degree.<\/p>\n
“A phenomenal amount of work goes into a successful trans-Mars injection burn, from considered spacecraft design and precision trajectory planning to meticulous on-orbit operations,” said Sir Peter Beck, Founder and CEO of Rocket Lab. “Performing these TMI maneuvers flawlessly is a testament to the relentless execution of the Rocket Lab team and the ongoing close collaboration of our mission partners at UC Berkeley and NASA. Next stop, Mars.”<\/p>\n
Rocket Lab delivered both ESCAPADE spacecraft three and a half years after contract award, a pace the company attributes to building critical hardware and software in-house, from solar arrays, propellant tanks, and reaction wheels to star trackers, radios, avionics, and flight software. The company says that approach reduces cost and schedule risk for customers. ESCAPADE extends Rocket Lab’s deep-space work, which includes NASA’s CAPSTONE lunar mission, as well as its Mars heritage spanning Perseverance’s robotic arm, Mastcam-Z opto-mechanics, and the solar power behind Ingenuity, InSight, and the Mars 2020 cruise stage.<\/p>\n
Additional interplanetary correction maneuvers during cruise will refine each spacecraft’s path toward Mars. Blue and Gold are scheduled to perform Mars orbit insertion, the mission’s other major burn, in September 2027, and will begin transitioning to their first science formation in 2028.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The satellites, named Blue and Gold, were designed and built by Rocket Lab for NASA and the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory. Once at Mars, the two will work in tandem to measure how the solar wind strips ions from the planet’s upper atmosphere, data that will help scientists reconstruct Mars’ atmospheric escape […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92016,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92015"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92015"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92029,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92015\/revisions\/92029"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}