NASA’s ESCAPADE mission, featuring twin satellites managed by the University of California, Berkeley, is set to launch no earlier than November 9 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. This will be the first time two identical spacecraft are sent together to another planet. The mission aims to map Mars’ magnetic fields, upper atmosphere, and ionosphere in three dimensions.
The satellites, nicknamed Blue and Gold after UC Berkeley’s colors, will operate in formation around Mars. They are scheduled to arrive at the Red Planet in 2027 and will be controlled from UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL). The science instruments were developed by UC Berkeley and its partners; Rocket Lab USA built the spacecraft. Launch will take place on a New Glenn rocket provided by Blue Origin.
According to Robert Lillis, ESCAPADE principal investigator at SSL, “Understanding how the ionosphere varies will be a really important part of understanding how to correct the distortions in radio signals that we will need to communicate with each other and to navigate on Mars.”
Mars lacks a global magnetic field like Earth’s and has only a thin atmosphere. This leaves its surface exposed to high-energy solar radiation. Lillis explained that last year NASA’s Curiosity rover recorded a solar storm delivering as much radiation in one day as would normally occur over 100 days.
“We will be making the space weather measurements we need to understand the system well enough to forecast solar storms whose radiation could harm astronauts on the surface of Mars or in orbit,” said Lillis.
ESCAPADE is also notable for its planned trajectory. Unlike previous missions that relied on a direct path during specific planetary alignments occurring every 26 months, ESCAPADE will travel first to a Lagrange point—a region where gravity from Earth and the sun balance—before returning near Earth for a slingshot maneuver toward Mars. This new route may allow future missions greater flexibility in launch timing.
“Can we launch to Mars when the planets are not aligned? ESCAPADE is paving the way for that,” said Jeffrey Parker of Advanced Space LLC at a recent conference.
UC Berkeley has contributed scientific instruments for Martian exploration for nearly six decades. Previous missions such as NASA’s MAVEN and Emirates Mars Mission Hope probe have revealed that while Mars does not have an overall magnetic field, it possesses localized crustal magnetism due to ancient geological activity.
“Mars has this patchy crustal magnetism that results in magnetic fields that are locally strong though generally far weaker than Earth’s field,” said Lillis. “They’re effective at pushing the solar wind away up to 1,500 km away from the surface.”
ESCAPADE’s dual-satellite approach enables simultaneous measurements from different locations around Mars, offering new insights into how particles escape from its atmosphere—a process believed crucial in thinning what was once a much denser Martian atmosphere.
“To understand how the solar wind drives different kinds of atmospheric escape is a key piece of the puzzle of the climate evolution of Mars. ESCAPADE gives us what you might call a stereo perspective — two different vantage points simultaneously,” Lillis stated.
Space physicist Shaoxui Xu noted: “The geological evidence shows that Mars once had water on it, and in order to keep the water, you need a thick atmosphere… There are only two ways for atmosphere to leave — either go into the ground or escape to space, and there are a lot of studies showing that escape has been a very significant contributor to the evolution of the atmosphere.”
The mission is part of NASA’s SIMPLEx program which funds smaller-scale planetary exploration efforts. The cost for developing ESCAPADE up through delivery was $49 million—significantly less than traditional interplanetary missions due partly to commercial partnerships with companies like Rocket Lab USA.
“ESCAPADE represents a new way of doing things, with much lower cost, more commercial involvement, and a somewhat higher risk tolerance,” said Lillis. “The reliability of individual components and subsystems has improved so it’s possible to send two spacecraft to Mars for roughly one-tenth of what it would have cost 10 or 15 years ago.”
Once they reach Mars orbit after their journey via New Glenn’s second flight—the rocket made its inaugural launch earlier this year—the satellites will synchronize their orbits for close-interval observations previously not possible with single-spacecraft missions like MAVEN or Europe’s Mars Express.
“That’s important scientifically because it lets us monitor short timescale variability… When we have two spacecraft crossing those regions in quick succession, we can monitor how those regions vary on timescales as short as two minutes and up to 30 minutes… So this will allow us to really make measurements we’ve never made before,” said Lillis.
Instruments onboard include electrostatic analyzers built at SSL; NASA Goddard contributed magnetic field detectors; Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University provided plasma sensors; Northern Arizona University supplied an onboard camera.
Gwen Hanley from SSL explained: “We’ll know which direction (the particles) are going and what energies they have, which tells us if they’re coming back to Mars or if they are able to leave Mars.” Phyllis Whittlesey added: “We can learn a lot about… electric fields that accelerate ions and electrons and the local Mars environment.”
Lillis reflected on human prospects: “It is definitely going to be a challenge to establish a human settlement on Mars… But you know humans are tenacious right?”
