The twin spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on November 13, 2025, at a time when Earth and Mars sat on opposite sides of the Sun. Rather than heading straight for Mars, the spacecraft entered a loiter, or Earth-proximity, orbit, charting a kidney-bean-shaped course around Lagrange point 2, a gravitational balancing point about a million miles from Earth on the opposite side of the planet from the Sun. They then returned toward Earth to perform the slingshot maneuver once Earth and Mars were favorably aligned.
The first spacecraft completed its closest approach and an approximately 9-minute trans-Mars injection burn at 5 a.m. EST on November 7, when it was about 1,000 miles above Earth’s surface. The second spacecraft followed at 6 a.m. EST on November 9, when it was about 650 miles above the surface. The trans-Mars injection burn is the engine firing that commits each spacecraft to its path to Mars.
“This is the first time NASA has used a powered Earth flyby to propel a spacecraft toward Mars, and we’ve now executed this maneuver twice, flawlessly, in just two days,” said Asal Naseri, acting associate flight director for the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Jeff Parker of Advanced Space, lead mission designer, said the strategy “provides the flexibility to launch almost anytime and then use Earth’s gravity to get a boost to Mars, rather than waiting every two years to launch there directly when the planets are aligned.”
The spacecraft have already taken science observations during their loiter orbit, flying multiple times through Earth’s magnetotail, the part of the planet’s magnetic environment stretched away from Earth by the solar wind. During the 10-month cruise, they will also study the dynamics of the solar wind between Earth and Mars, while performing a series of trajectory correction maneuvers to ensure a precise course.
Once in orbit around Mars, the two spacecraft will fly in formation to study how the solar wind, a stream of material flowing from the Sun at a million miles per hour, interacts with the Martian environment and drives atmospheric loss. “By better understanding how the solar wind affects the Martian environment, ESCAPADE’s findings could help us plan and prepare for future human exploration of the Red Planet,” said Michele Cash, ESCAPADE program scientist at NASA Headquarters. Principal investigator Rob Lillis of the University of California, Berkeley, said it will be “the first science mission to choreograph two orbiters around Mars, and the first time we will be able to make coordinated observations of the Martian environment from two different locations simultaneously.”
The spacecraft are scheduled to perform Mars orbit insertion burns on September 7 and September 9, 2027, each firing its engine for about 11 minutes to slow down and enter orbit. They will then take several months to maneuver into their first science formation, with science operations expected to begin in June 2028. Six months later, the two spacecraft will shift into different orbits for a five-month science campaign, with one observing the incoming solar wind and the other studying how Mars responds in real time.
