Twin Spacecraft Achieve Trans-Mars Injection | NASA's ESCAPADE Mission

Twin Spacecraft Achieve Trans-Mars Injection | NASA's ESCAPADE Mission

Blue and Gold are on their way to Mars! 

The twin spacecraft, designed and built by Rocket Lab for ‪NASA‬ and ‪UC Berkeley‬'s ESCAPADE Mission, completed powered Earth gravity assists to each perfectly execute a trans-Mars Injection. Both spacecraft fired their main engine for 9.5 minutes, hurtling past Earth at more than 10 kilometers per second to enter an interplanetary cruise phase. Blue and Gold are due to arrive at the Red Planet in September 2027 to study the Martian atmosphere. 

A trans-Mars injection (TMI) is a heliocentric orbit where a propulsive maneuver is used to set a spacecraft on a trajectory, also known as Mars transfer orbit that will place it as far as Mars orbit.

Every two years, low-energy transfer windows open up. This allows movement between the two planets with the lowest possible energy requirements. Transfer injections can place spacecraft into either a Hohmann transfer orbit or bi-elliptic transfer orbit.

Learn more about this ESCAPADE Mission milestone: https://rocketlabcorp.com/updates/twin-satellites-built-by-rocket-lab-for-nasas-escapade-mission-complete-successful-trans-mars-injection-burns-setting-course-for-the-red-planet/

ESCAPADE is led by the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory. It is responsible for mission management, systems engineering, science leadership, navigation, operations, the electron and ion electrostatic analyzers, plus science data processing and archiving.

Key mission partners are Rocket Lab USA (spacecraft), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (magnetometers), Embry Riddle Aeronautical University (Langmuir probes), Advanced Space LLC (mission design), and Blue Origin (launch).

Learn more about the two identical spacecraft designed, built, integrated, and tested by Rocket Lab for the University of California Berkeley’s Space Science Laboratory and NASA's Mars Mission:
https://escapade.ssl.berkeley.edu

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/escapade

Want to make interplanetary history with us? 
Our Space Systems team is hiring: https://rocketlabcorp.com/careers/

Video Credit: Rocket Lab
Duration: 2 minutes, 46 seconds
Release Date: Nov. 10, 2026

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