Advanced Space celebrates the successful launch of NASA’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars

Advanced Space provides mission design, trajectory optimization, maneuver design, and future navigation operations for this ground-breaking mission led by UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, for NASA.

WESTMINSTER, CO, 13 November 2025 – Advanced Space, a leading space technology solutions company supporting missions throughout the solar system, is celebrating the successful launch of NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission — a groundbreaking twin-spacecraft mission to Mars. This is a first-of-its-kind formation of two satellites, built by Rocket Lab. This innovative mission will send two satellites into the Martian orbit to conduct coordinated, multipoint observations aimed at unraveling the complex interplay between space weather and Mars’ unique “hybrid” magnetosphere. By examining how solar wind interactions drive atmospheric loss, ESCAPADE will provide critical insights into Mars’ climate history and evolution. The mission is led by the University of California, Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory.

ESCAPADE was launched aboard Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, marking a major milestone in NASA’s Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program, which provides opportunities for low-cost science spacecraft to get to space. To maintain a lower overall cost, SIMPLEx missions have a higher risk posture and lighter requirements for oversight and management.

Advanced Space’s Role: Designing a Journey from Earth to Mars

Advanced Space has supported ESCAPADE since its very beginning, working with UC Berkeley and NASA, most notably by iterating many versions of this mission, designing the orbits, interplanetary cruise, and launch targets.

Advanced Space LLC leads the overall mission and trajectory design for ESCAPADE. Faced with all the technical challenges inherent to interplanetary science and delays in launch, Advanced Space created a robust mission design that maximizes the chance for a successful Earth-proximity phase, interplanetary cruise, Mars orbit insertion, and science orbits. At times, the spacecraft will share an orbit around Mars and at other times will take different orbits, while working in tandem.

What is innovative about this approach is that the alignment between Earth and Mars does not currently allow ESCAPADE to use a traditional direct-to-Mars transfer. Instead, ESCAPADE will launch into a “loiter” (or “Earth-proximity”) orbit that loops around Earth’s Lagrange point 2 (about a million miles from Earth, opposite the Sun) until the next planetary alignment window. Once the planets have reached the ideal alignment in fall 2026, the ESCAPADE spacecraft will use an Earth gravity assist to loop around Earth and begin the journey to Mars.

As the mission design and trajectory optimization lead for ESCAPADE, Advanced Space developed and validated the mission’s interplanetary navigation strategy, ensuring that both spacecraft will reach Mars safely and efficiently. The company’s work encompassed the design of ESCAPADE’s launch targets, deep-space cruise trajectory, Earth gravity assist, and Mars orbit insertion sequences, as well as supporting planetary protection compliance and ongoing navigation operations, post-launch.

“ESCAPADE represents a new era of interplanetary exploration — one that is faster, more agile, and highly collaborative,” said Bradley Cheetham, CEO of Advanced Space. “We are honored to have helped chart the course for this twin-spacecraft mission and to contribute to science that will deepen humanity’s understanding of how planets evolve.”

“We were very fortunate to have a partner in Dr. Jeff Parker and the team at Advanced Space to help iterate and adapt to the challenges of the mission. Over the years, the mission design has changed literally two dozen times in response to changing constraints and requirements. Without Jeff’s technical expertise and ability to find creative solutions to our mission design needs, we would’ve been in a very tough spot. His rigorous analytical approach and tireless work ethic have been indispensable in enhancing the robustness of our multi-spacecraft mission design. We thank Jeff and his team for their outstanding contributions in getting us confidently on our way to Mars.” said Rob Lillis, Principal Investigator of the ESCAPADE mission at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory.

The ESCAPADE mission represents a significant technological and scientific milestone. Utilizing cutting-edge propulsion, navigation, and communications systems, the twin spacecraft will employ deep-space trajectory correction maneuvers and Earth gravity assists to achieve optimal Mars orbit insertion. This coordinated approach – made possible by simultaneous, multipoint measurements – allows for unprecedented observation of space weather phenomena and related atmospheric effects on Mars. The insights gained will not only enhance our scientific understanding of Mars but also inform the design and protection of future human and robotic explorers, by enabling launches to Mars outside the two-week period every two years. This will be key to sending goods and eventually humans to the Red planet, anytime, avoiding possible logjams due to the tight launch windows for direct inject Mars opportunities.

More information: https://escapade.ssl.berkeley.edu/ and https://science.nasa.gov/mission/escapade/