NASA's two ESCAPADE spacecraft have each completed a powered Earth flyby, using Earth's gravity plus a sustained engine burn to slingshot themselves toward Mars, the agency said. With those maneuvers done, the twins are on target to reach the Red Planet in September 2027.
"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.
The spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Nov. 13, 2025, when Earth and Mars were on opposite sides of the Sun. Instead of heading straight for Mars, they entered a "loiter" orbit, taking a kidney-bean-shaped course around Lagrange point 2, about a million miles from Earth on the opposite side from the Sun, then came back for the slingshot once the planets were favorably aligned. "This method 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," said Jeff Parker of Advanced Space, the lead mission designer.
Two burns, a 10-month cruise, Berkeley in charge of the science
The first spacecraft completed its close approach and an approximately 9-minute trans-Mars injection burn at 5 a.m. Eastern on Nov. 7, about 1,000 miles above Earth's surface. The second followed two days later, completing its approach and burn at 6 a.m. Eastern on Nov. 9, about 650 miles up. Those flybys start a 10-month cruise, with Mars orbit insertion burns planned for Sept. 7 and Sept. 9, 2027. Along the way the spacecraft will perform trajectory correction maneuvers and can study the solar wind between Earth and Mars. They already took some science observations during the loiter, flying multiple times through Earth's magnetotail.
Once in orbit, the twins will fly in formation to study how the solar wind — a million-mile-per-hour stream of material from the Sun — 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, the program scientist at NASA Headquarters. Each spacecraft will fire its engine for about 11 minutes to enter orbit. Science operations are expected to begin in June 2028, after several months of maneuvering into a first formation in which they follow one another in the same orbit. Six months later they will shift, with one traveling farther from Mars to watch the incoming solar wind and the other staying closer to see how the planet responds, a campaign scheduled to last five months.
"This 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," said principal investigator Rob Lillis of the University of California, Berkeley. ESCAPADE is funded by NASA's Heliophysics Division as part of the SIMPLEx program, which supports lower-budget, innovative planetary missions — and it now has a clear Bay Area stamp on the science team.