NASA’s ESCAPADE mission, which features two identical satellites managed by the University of California, Berkeley, is set to launch no earlier than November 9 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The mission marks the first time a dual-satellite system will be sent to another planet. The spacecraft, nicknamed Blue and Gold after UC Berkeley’s school colors, are designed to fly in formation around Mars and provide a three-dimensional map of the planet’s magnetic fields, upper atmosphere, and ionosphere.
The satellites are expected to arrive at Mars in 2027 and will be operated from UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL). The scientific instruments on board were developed by UC Berkeley and its partners. Rocket Lab USA built the spacecraft, while Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket will carry them into space.
According to Robert Lillis, principal investigator for ESCAPADE 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.” He added that the mission aims to improve forecasting of solar storms that could threaten astronauts: “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.”
Mars lacks a global magnetic field like Earth’s and has only localized crustal fields. This makes it more vulnerable to high-energy particle radiation from solar storms. Last year, NASA’s Curiosity rover recorded an intense solar storm on Mars that delivered as much radiation in one day as would normally occur over 100 days.
ESCAPADE is also pioneering a new trajectory for reaching Mars. Instead of following the traditional Hohmann Transfer route during a narrow launch window every 26 months, ESCAPADE will travel first to a Lagrange point—a location where Earth’s and Sun’s gravity balance—before looping back toward Earth for a slingshot maneuver out toward Mars. This approach could allow future missions greater flexibility in launch timing.
Jeffrey Parker of Advanced Space LLC commented on this innovation: “Can we launch to Mars when the planets are not aligned? ESCAPADE is paving the way for that.”
UC Berkeley has contributed instruments for several previous missions studying Mars’ atmosphere and magnetic environment over nearly six decades. These include NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor (1996), MAVEN (2013), and Emirates Mars Mission Hope probe (2020).
Lillis explained some science goals: “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.”
Deputy principal investigator Shaoxui Xu said: “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.”
Lillis noted that understanding variations in Mars’ ionosphere can also help future communications systems on Mars by correcting radio signal distortions.
The project was funded through NASA’s SIMPLEx program aiming for lower-cost planetary exploration missions. Rocket Lab USA constructed and tested both spacecraft at its Long Beach facility at an estimated cost of $49 million.
“ESCAPADE represents a new way of doing things, with much lower cost, more commercial involvement, and a somewhat higher risk tolerance,” Lillis said. He noted advances have made it possible “to send two spacecraft to Mars for roughly one-tenth of what it would have cost 10 or 15 years ago.”
Once at Mars, Blue and Gold will synchronize their orbits so they can monitor changes in near-space conditions within minutes rather than hours—something previous single-satellite missions could not do.
Gwen Hanley from SSL described their instrument capabilities: “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 the way that particles are flowing and the electric fields that accelerate ions and electrons and the local Mars environment.”
Additional contributions came from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (magnetic field detector), Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (plasma measurement device), and Northern Arizona University (onboard camera).
Lillis reflected on human prospects for living on Mars: “It is definitely going to be a challenge to establish a human settlement on Mars,” he said. “But, you know, humans are tenacious, right?”
