NASA’s ESCAPADE mission will use powered Earth flybys on Nov. 7 and Nov. 9, 2026, to send its twin spacecraft toward Mars. Each spacecraft — the pair called Red and Blue — will combine a close gravitational pass with a roughly 9-minute engine burn (a trans‑Mars injection) at closest approach to increase its speed from about 10.14 km/s to about 10.78 km/s, an increase of more than 1,600 km/h (about 1,000+ mph). The first burn is scheduled around 5 a.m. EST on Nov. 7 for one vehicle and about 6 a.m. EST on Nov. 9 for the second.
NASA describes these as powered, or propulsive, flybys — a form of the Oberth maneuver — and this mission will be the first to perform a powered Earth flyby on a spacecraft bound for Mars. ESCAPADE did not launch in the usual Earth–Mars launch window. After launching on Nov. 13, 2025, the two probes loitered near the Earth–Sun L2 point in a kidney‑bean loop and then returned toward Earth so they could exploit Earth’s gravity once Earth and Mars returned to favorable alignment.
At closest approach during the flybys the spacecraft will be roughly between 965 and 1,770 kilometers (about 600–1,100 miles) above Earth — higher than most Earth satellites — and each vehicle is about the size of a standard refrigerator. After the burns the twins will begin a roughly 10‑month cruise and are due to arrive at Mars on Sept. 7 and Sept. 9, 2027.
ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) carries identical payloads on two spacecraft so scientists can separate spatial from temporal variations in the interaction between the solar wind and Mars’ remnant crustal magnetic fields. Once at Mars the mission will be the first multi‑spacecraft formation flight around the planet. In its initial Science Phase A (about six months) the pair will fly the same orbit at varying separations (a ‘‘String of Pearls’’). In Science Phase B the spacecraft will adopt different orbits — NASA says Blue will lower to about 7,000 km and Red will raise to about 10,000 km — for about five months to sample different regions.
The nonstandard route already yielded “bonus” science: while returning from L2 the probes traversed a distant region of Earth’s magnetotail, a region no spacecraft had directly explored before. Mission scientists report ESCAPADE observed interesting activity and structure there and plan to publish those results soon.
Observers on the ground may catch dim telescope views of the probes. NASA notes the spacecraft will be faint and likely require a telescope to see as slow‑moving points of light; they should be visible over the western U.S. in the hours before each burn and will cross over southern Australia when they ignite their engines (first burn begins at 4:51 a.m. EST / 8:51 p.m. AEDT on Nov. 7; second at 5:51 a.m. EST / 9:51 p.m. AEDT on Nov. 9). The team will use trajectory correction maneuvers in the days after the burns to refine the course to Mars.
ESCAPADE’s scientific goal is to measure how the million‑mile‑per‑hour solar wind interacts with Mars’ localized crustal magnetic fields and drives atmospheric loss — details that will help constrain how Mars transitioned from a warmer, wetter past to its current thin, CO2‑dominated atmosphere.
