NASA’s Second ESCAPADE Spacecraft Completes Trajectory Maneuver

On Jan. 6, the mission operations team for NASA’s ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) successfully completed the second trajectory correction maneuver for one of the two spacecraft, after delaying the attempt in December 2025. The other spacecraft completed its first two maneuvers in December as originally planned.

This maneuver sets up the spacecraft for its “loiter” or “Earth-proximity” orbit around a location in space about a million miles from Earth called Lagrange point 2. In November 2026, the twin spacecraft will fly by Earth to use the planet’s gravity to slingshot their way to Mars.

The two ESCAPADE spacecraft will arrive at Mars in September 2027, where they will study how a million-mile-per-hour stream of material flowing from the Sun, known as the solar wind, interacts with the Martian environment and how that drives atmospheric loss at the Red Planet.