Overview
- Rocket Lab delivered the Explorer-class pair, Blue and Gold, to a Kennedy Space Center cleanroom for post-transport inspections and functional testing ahead of fueling and encapsulation.
- Launch is scheduled no earlier than this fall from Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 36 on Blue Origin’s New Glenn, which would be the rocket’s second mission.
- The spacecraft will cruise to Mars for about 22 months before entering complementary elliptical orbits, with arrival now expected in 2027 and a one-year science campaign to follow.
- ESCAPADE will make simultaneous two-point measurements of Mars’ magnetosphere to investigate how the solar wind strips particles from the planet’s atmosphere.
- Built in about three and a half years on Rocket Lab’s Explorer/Photon platform under NASA’s SIMPLEx program, the mission flies under a $20 million Blue Origin task order.