ESCAPADE

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Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) is a spacecraft mission to Mars consisting of two spacecraft known as Blue and Gold, which launched in November 2025. The mission is designed to demonstrate low-cost planetary space exploration. The twin spacecraft will study Mars' magnetosphere and how solar wind contributed to the loss of most of the planet's atmosphere over Solar System history. The mission is led by UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory with Dr. Robert Lillis as Principal Investigator. It is part of NASA's SIMPLEx program. Each identical ESCAPADE spacecraft has a dry mass of ~200 kg (440 lb), with a wet mass of 535 kg (1,179 lb). The spacecraft bus is based on the Rocket Lab Explorer spacecraft bus and is approximately 1.20 × 1.65 × 1.09 m (3 ft 11 in × 5 ft 5 in × 3 ft 7 in). The spacecraft is powered by two solar array wings that when fully deployed is approximately 4.88 × 1.65 × 1.09 m (16.0 × 5.4 × 3.6 ft). The spacecraft buses were drastically enlarged from the original mission that was supposed to hitch a ride on Psyche. After a change in launch vehicle made it impossible for the smaller dual orbiters to reach Mars while attached to Psyche, a separate launcher had to be used which enabled larger spacecraft buses.