Partnerships with commercial companies have been a centerpiece of the mission. Blue Origin is supplying the launch vehicle, New Glenn. This will be the rocket’s second-ever flight and first NASA science launch. Rocket Lab, a New Zealand-founded, US-based company, designed the spacecraft, including power, communications, propulsion, data acquisition, and navigation systems. Advanced Space LLC is in charge of mission design, determining the actual trajectory of the probes from Earth’s surface to Mars orbit.
Getting there
ESCAPADE was originally slated to be a ride-along with the asteroid-focused Psyche mission that launched in 2023. However, the launch dynamics for that mission were determined to reach Mars with too high a velocity for the current ESCAPADE spacecraft to safely enter an orbit around Mars compatible with the science objectives.
Instead, ESCAPADE was given its own launch, and the new flight plan is a first for Mars travel. Typically, missions to Mars wait to launch during narrow Earth-Mars orbital alignment windows to minimize space travel time and simplify flight trajectories. Rather than adhere to tradition, ESCAPADE will first spend a year in a L2 libration point orbit around Earth before starting its 10-month cruise, reaching Mars orbit in September 2027. This plan allows for significantly more flexibility and, if successful, will set the stage for future Mars missions to carry out a similar plan. Although the U.S. federal government is currently shut down, delaying the launch further would incur significant additional costs, so NASA is still mandated to carry out the work.
Once at Mars, the two probes will spend nine months calibrating instruments and aligning to a highly elliptical orbit to track changing conditions through time, moving one in front of the other and reaching as close as 160 kilometers (100 miles) above the surface. After six months, the probes will disband to different orbital planes and continue collecting data for another five months to capture spatial variability. The primary science mission target is for a total of 11 months of data collection that will holistically capture the magnetosphere dynamics.