ESCAPADE

Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers

future Mission

An animation showing Mars against a black background. Two spacecraft – like short gray cyclinders with flat panels on the right and left – orbit the planet.

ESCAPADE will use two identical spacecraft to investigate how the solar wind interacts with Mars’ magnetic environment and how this interaction drives the planet’s atmospheric escape.

Type

Orbiter

Launch

2024

Target

Mars

Objective

Study the magnetosphere of Mars

This artist's concept shows one ESCAPADE spacecraft orbiting Mars at the beginning of the mission’s science campaign.

James Rattray/Rocket Lab USA

ESCAPADE is the first multi-spacecraft orbital science mission to the Red Planet.

Its twin orbiters will take simultaneous observations from different locations around Mars.
The observations will reveal the planet’s real-time response to space weather and how the Martian magnetosphere changes over time.

ESCAPADE will analyze how Mars’ magnetic field guides particle flows around the planet, how energy and momentum are transported from the solar wind through the magnetosphere, and what processes control the flow of energy and matter into and out of the Martian atmosphere.

The ESCAPADE mission is managed by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, with key partners Rocket Lab, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Advanced Space LLC, and Blue Origin.