Both small ESCAPADE spacecraft have completed their powered Earth flybys. The first fired its engine for about nine minutes at closest approach around 10:00 UTC on 7 November, some 1,600 km up; the second did the same around 11:00 UTC on 9 November at about 1,050 km. “We’ve now executed this maneuver twice, flawlessly, in just two days,” said NASA’s Asal Naseri. Launched in November 2025, the pair had waited a year near the Lagrange point L2. Now comes a cruise of about ten months with small course corrections, then 11-minute braking burns on 7 and 9 September 2027. Science begins in June 2028: two craft measuring at once how the solar wind strips Mars’s atmosphere. Our take: a cheap mission that proved a new way to leave for Mars almost any time.
2 / 2powered Earth flybys completed
~10 monthscruise to Mars
Jun 2028science operations begin