NASA's twin ESCAPADE spacecraft line up powered Earth flybys on the way to Mars

2 November 2026

NASA has said its two ESCAPADE spacecraft will swing past Earth this month on their way to Mars.
ESCAPADE stands for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, and the pair was launched in November 2025.
Each spacecraft will make a powered flyby, combining Earth's gravity with an engine burn of about nine minutes that raises its speed from roughly 6.3 to 6.7 miles a second.
The first flyby is set for 7 November and the second for 9 November, with the spacecraft passing between 600 and 1,100 miles above the surface.
The first spacecraft is due to reach Mars on 7 September 2027 and the second two days later.
ESCAPADE will be the first mission to fly more than one spacecraft in formation around Mars.
The two will study how the solar wind interacts with the Martian environment and how that drives the loss of the planet's atmosphere.
The mission belongs to NASA's Heliophysics Division.