In
a few days, NASA’s ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics
Explorers) will perform a maneuver that no agency spacecraft has flown before —
and do it twice. Each of the two ESCAPADE spacecraft will execute a “powered”
flyby of Earth, combining Earth’s gravity with an engine burn, to slingshot
itself toward Mars.
The first spacecraft will conduct its flyby and engine burn around 5 a.m. EST on Saturday, Nov. 7, and the second will do so two days later, around 6 a.m. EST on Monday, Nov. 9. As each spacecraft flies close to Earth, our planet’s gravity will speed it up and redirect it toward Mars. At the spacecraft’s closest approach to Earth, it also will perform a “trans-Mars injection burn,” firing its engine for about 9 minutes to give itself an extra boost toward the Red Planet.
In November 2026, each of NASA’s two ESCAPADE (Escape
and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) spacecraft will execute a
powered flyby of Earth, combining Earth’s gravity with an engine burn, to
slingshot itself toward Mars. The first spacecraft will make its closest
approach to Earth and complete its engine burn around 5 a.m. EST on Saturday,
Nov. 7, and the second will do so two days later, around 6 a.m. EST on Monday,
Nov. 9. In this animation, each spacecraft’s approximately 9-minute trans-Mars
injection burn appears as an orange arc along the spacecraft’s trajectory.
Advanced Space/Matt Bolliger
The
trans-Mars injection burn will increase each spacecraft’s speed by more than
1,000 miles per hour, or from about 6.3 miles per second to about 6.7 miles per
second (from about Mach 30 to Mach 31). At that final speed, the spacecraft
could fly from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco in less than 7 minutes.
After completing their successful powered flybys, the
two spacecraft will then have a 10-month cruise to Mars, arriving at the Red
Planet on Sept. 7 and Sept. 9, 2027, respectively.
At Mars, ESCAPADE will become the first multi-spacecraft mission to fly in formation
around the planet. The ESCAPADE mission 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 Mars.
Some spacecraft have used Earth flybys to direct
themselves to other destinations in the solar system, but no Mars-bound
spacecraft has successfully executed a powered flyby, also known as an Oberth
maneuver. Previous missions that reached Mars launched from Earth at a time
when the two planets were aligned in space — which only happens every 26 months
— to shorten the trip and use the least amount of fuel. However, ESCAPADE
launched in November 2025, when Earth and Mars were on opposite sides of the Sun.
Instead of heading directly to Mars, ESCAPADE pioneered a new route. The two
spacecraft flew in a kidney-bean-shaped loop around a place in space called the
Earth-Sun Lagrange point 2 and then headed back toward Earth so they could use
Earth’s gravity to propel themselves toward the Red Planet once the planets
returned to alignment, which is now.
The ESCAPADE mission is pioneering a unique path to
get to Mars. After launching in November 2025, the two ESCAPADE spacecraft
looped around the Earth-Sun Lagrange point 2 (L2), in an “Earth-proximity” or
“loiter” orbit that allowed the spacecraft to return to Earth in November 2026
and use our planet’s gravity to slingshot themselves to Mars.
Advanced Space/Matt Bolliger
This
unique route already has allowed ESCAPADE to collect some “bonus” science as
the spacecraft flew through a distant region of Earth’s magnetotail, a part of
Earth’s magnetic environment that gets stretched out away from Earth by the
solar wind. No spacecraft had directly explored that part of Earth’s
magnetotail before. Mission scientists report that ESCAPADE observed some
interesting activity and structure in the magnetotail and are planning to share
those findings soon.
As the two ESCAPADE spacecraft perform their Earth
flybys on Nov. 7 and 9, some observers on the ground might be able to spot
them, though the spacecraft will be faint and a telescope will most likely be
needed to find them as dim points moving against the stars. At their closest
approach to Earth, the spacecraft, which are each about the size of a standard
refrigerator, will be between 600 and 1,100 miles above the planet’s surface,
which is higher than most Earth-orbiting satellites.
Each spacecraft will fire its engine as it flies over
southern Australia and should be visible with telescopes from there. The first
spacecraft’s engine burn will begin at 4:51 a.m. EST (or 8:51 p.m. Australia
Eastern Daylight Time, AEDT) on Nov. 7. The second spacecraft’s burn will begin
at 5:51 a.m. EST (or 9:51 p.m. AEDT) on Nov. 9.
In the hours leading up to the flybys, each ESCAPADE spacecraft should be visible in the skies over the western U.S. until about an hour before its engine burn, at which point the spacecraft will slip below the horizon. This means the first spacecraft will likely be brightest for the western U.S. between midnight and 1 a.m. PST in the early morning of Nov. 7, and the second one will be brightest between 1 and 2 a.m. PST on Nov. 9.
As they fly close to Earth, the two ESCAPADE
spacecraft could be visible through telescopes. The first ESCAPADE spacecraft
will make its closest approach to Earth around 2:51 a.m. Mountain Time (MT) on
Nov. 7, 2026. The color-coded arc in this star chart shows the path that
spacecraft will travel across the sky as seen from Boulder, Colorado, from
approximately 7 p.m. (19:00) MT on Nov. 6 to 2 a.m. (02:00) MT on Nov. 7. The
colors represent the altitude of the spacecraft, which will decrease during the
time shown, with red showing the lowest altitude along the path. The positions
of the constellations are shown as they will appear at 2 a.m. MT, when the
spacecraft is at the lowest altitude along the path (represented by the small
white circle at the red end of the path). Maps for other locations can be found
at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/15114/.
Advanced Space
Each
spacecraft will appear to move through the sky relatively slowly and take
several hours to cross from east to west overhead.
If you would like to try to spot the ESCAPADE
spacecraft with a telescope, you can use the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Horizons
System to get coordinates for the two
spacecraft at various times for your viewing location.
Several days after ESCAPADE’s trans-Mars injection
burns, the mission team will know how well the spacecraft are aimed for Mars.
The team will use multiple trajectory correction maneuvers to adjust the path
of the two spacecraft during their journey to Mars, ensuring they are on a
precise course to rendezvous with the Red Planet in September next year.
by Vanessa Thomas
NASA’s
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Source: NASA’s Twin ESCAPADE Spacecraft to Slingshot Past Earth on Way to Mars - NASA Science
