Launched in November 2025, the mission has now turned on its science instruments to investigate the influence of space weather emerging from the Sun on Mars.
The mission will also study space weather in new ways near Earth and on the way to Mars, helping NASA protect future explorers from harsh Martian conditions.
Joe Westlake, heliophysics division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington, explained: “The pioneering ESCAPADE duo will not only investigate the Sun’s role in transforming Mars into an uninhabitable planet, but also will help inform the development of space weather protocols for solar events directed at Mars during future human missions to the Red Planet.
“By joining the heliophysics fleet of missions across the solar system, ESCAPADE will be another weather station making humans and technology in space safer and more successful.”
Why are conditions on Mars so harsh?
Once warm, watery, and blanketed by a thick atmosphere, the Red Planet is today cold, dry, and draped in a thin atmospheric veil.
The main culprit is a relentless stream of particles from the Sun, known as the solar wind. Over billions of years, the solar wind has stripped away much of the Martian atmosphere, causing the planet to cool and its surface water to evaporate.
How space weather interacts with Mars’s magnetic field
With its twin spacecraft, ESCAPADE is the first science mission to coordinate two orbiters around Mars, gaining a perspective we’ve never had before.
Together, the ESCAPADE twins will measure short-term changes in the magnetised environment around Mars, called the magnetosphere, and uncover real-time processes driving the planet’s atmospheric escape.
“Having two spacecraft is going to help us understand cause and effect – how the solar wind, when it comes to Mars, interacts with the magnetic field,” said Michele Cash, ESCAPADE program scientist at NASA Headquarters.
Once ESCAPADE reaches Mars, its twin spacecraft will follow in the same orbit, passing over the same areas at different times to determine when and where changes are occurring.
After six months, the two spacecraft will shift into different orbits, with one travelling farther from Mars and the other staying closer to it.
Planned to last for five months, this second formation aims to study the space weather and Martian magnetosphere simultaneously, allowing scientists to investigate how Mars responds to the solar wind in real time.
“Prior spacecraft could either be in the upstream solar wind, or they could be close to the planet measuring its magnetosphere,” said Rob Lillis, the mission’s principal investigator at the University of California, Berkeley.
“ESCAPADE allows us to be in two places at once and to simultaneously measure the cause and the effect.”
Preparing for human exploration
Earth can withstand the solar wind’s ceaseless onslaught because it has a hardy magnetic field that shields us from the Sun’s energetic particles.
However, Mars’s once robust magnetic field has weakened over time. Today, it’s a patchwork of localised magnetism in the planet’s crust along with an ever-changing magnetic field generated by the solar wind’s interaction with charged particles in Mars’ upper atmosphere.
Mars has a hybrid magnetosphere made up of an induced magnetic field from the solar wind and crustal magnetic fields from the planet’s surface. In this artist’s concept yellow lines represent magnetic field lines from the Sun carried by the solar wind and blue lines represent Martian surface magnetic fields. White sparks indicate reconnection activity, where field lines break and reconnect, and red lines are reconnected magnetic fields that link the Martian surface to space. Credit: Anil Rao/Univ. of Colorado/MAVEN/NASA GSFC
This “hybrid” magnetosphere provides little protection against the atmosphere-stripping force of the solar wind.
This, plus Mars’ thin atmosphere, allows the Sun’s energetic particles to easily reach the Martian surface, endangering future human explorers there.
“Before we send humans to Mars, we need to understand what type of environment these astronauts are going to encounter,” Cash commented.
A unique journey
Previous Mars missions have launched when Earth and Mars are aligned in their orbits, which only happens every 26 months.
However, ESCAPADE launched early, pioneering a new strategy that allows Mars-bound spacecraft to launch almost anytime.
Instead of heading directly to Mars, ESCAPADE’s spacecraft are first looping around a location in space a million miles from Earth called Lagrange point 2.
In November 2026, when Earth and Mars are aligned, the ESCAPADE spacecraft will return to Earth and use our planet’s gravity to slingshot itself toward Mars for a September 2027 arrival.
Later, during their 10-month cruise to Mars, ESCAPADE’s two spacecraft will study space weather and the interplanetary magnetic environment that Mars-bound astronauts will also traverse, preparing for future journeys to the Red Planet.