ESCAPADE Mars Craft Complete Powered Earth Flybys

NASA’s twin ESCAPADE spacecraft have completed powered flybys of Earth and are now on course for Mars, the agency and the University of California, Berkeley said after manoeuvres on 7 and 9 November 2026. They have not arrived at the planet. NASA’s account says one craft made its closest approach and a roughly nine-minute trans-Mars injection burn at 5 a.m. EST on 7 November (10:00 Europe/London), about 1,000 miles above Earth, and the other completed its close approach and burn at 6 a.m. EST on 9 November (11:00 Europe/London), about 650 miles up. Mars orbit-insertion burns are planned for 7 and 9 September 2027, with science operations expected to begin in June 2028.

NASA and Berkeley assign the two named craft, Blue and Gold, to those dates differently, so the dates and altitudes are reported here without attaching a name to either flyby.

Two burns in two days, then a 10-month cruise

Asal Naseri, acting associate flight director for the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters, said: “This is the first time NASA has used a powered Earth flyby to propel a spacecraft toward Mars, and we’ve now executed this maneuver twice, flawlessly, in just two days.” That claim is NASA’s, and it is specifically about NASA missions.

Berkeley’s news story goes further, saying: “This was the first successful Earth-powered gravity assist for a deep space mission ever.” That broader first-ever wording is Berkeley’s, not NASA’s, and should be read as the university’s characterisation.

The two craft launched from Cape Canaveral on 13 November 2025 on Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, at a time when Earth and Mars were on opposite sides of the Sun. Instead of a direct transfer, they loitered in an Earth-proximity orbit around the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2, about a million miles from Earth, before returning for this month’s slingshot. NASA says the flybys now set both spacecraft on a 10-month cruise to Mars. The mission is led by Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, with Rocket Lab, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Advanced Space and Blue Origin as partners.

Once in orbit, NASA says, the pair will first fly in formation and later move into different paths, one farther from Mars to sample the incoming solar wind and one closer in to watch how the planet responds. That later split is planned about six months after science operations begin, with a five-month science campaign. All of those dates remain ahead of the spacecraft.

A course for Mars is not an arrival at Mars

The news this week is a successful departure burn, not a landing or an orbit insertion. The craft are heading to Mars; they are not there. The insertion burns are planned for 7 and 9 September 2027, almost ten months away, and even then the science campaign is not due to start until June 2028. Treating a powered Earth flyby as if the mission had already begun to sample the Martian environment would collapse a two-year gap into a single headline.

The firsts also need their labels left on. NASA says this is the first time it has used a powered Earth flyby to send a spacecraft towards Mars, and that it has now done so twice in two days. Berkeley says the manoeuvre is the first successful Earth-powered gravity assist for a deep-space mission of any kind. Those are not the same claim. The NASA wording is narrower and is the one that should be used if a reader wants the agency’s own account. The Berkeley wording is wider and is the university’s.

The unusual route is part of the story rather than a footnote. The 2025 launch window left Earth and Mars on opposite sides of the Sun, so the mission spent nearly a year near L2 and only now used Earth as a slingshot. Blue Origin has been planning more Florida pads to raise the New Glenn flight rate, the rocket that lofted these two craft, and NASA has separately been placing other Moon-and-beyond delivery work with a wider set of firms, including Blue Origin. This flyby does not, by itself, change those launch-cadence plans. It does show New Glenn already carrying a NASA interplanetary payload that has now left Earth behind.

Another Mars-system mission is already on its way in a different corner of the same neighbourhood: Japan’s MMX spacecraft, launched to return samples from Phobos. ESCAPADE’s job, if the 2027 insertions succeed, will be to watch how the solar wind strips the Martian atmosphere, not to land or to collect rocks. The next facts that would change this account are confirmation of a healthy cruise, and then the orbit-insertion burns themselves on 7 and 9 September 2027. Until those are done, ESCAPADE Mars is en route, not in orbit.