ESCAPADE, short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, was developed and launched on a budget of about $80 million, a bargain compared to all of NASA's recent missions to Mars. The spacecraft was built by Rocket Lab and the project is managed on behalf of NASA by the University of California, Berkeley.
NASA paid Blue Origin about $20 million to launch ESCAPADE, which is significantly less than it would cost to launch it on any other dedicated rocket. The space agency took on the risk of launching the relatively untested New Glenn rocket, which had not yet been certified by NASA or the Space Force to fly important government space missions.
The mission was due to launch last year when Earth and Mars were in the right position to allow direct travel between the planets. But Blue Origin delayed the launch, forcing a year-long wait until the company's second New Glenn was ready to fly. Now the ESCAPADE satellites, each weighing about half a ton and fully fueled, will remain in a unique orbit more than a million miles from Earth until November next year, when they will depart for the Red Planet. ESCAPADE will arrive on Mars in September 2027 and begin its science mission in 2028.
Rocket Lab ground controllers established contact with the ESCAPADE satellites late Thursday evening.
“The ESCAPADE mission is part of our strategy to understand the past and present of Mars so we can safely send the first astronauts there,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. “Understanding Martian space weather is a top priority for future missions as it helps us protect systems, robots and, most importantly, people in extreme environments.”
