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Science|Almost Everything About NASA’s Latest Mission to Mars Is Unusual
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/14/science/nasa-mars-escapade.html
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The ESCAPADE mission, which launched to space on a Blue Origin rocket on Thursday, breaks the mold of how planetary science missions typically come together.
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Kenneth Chang went to California in 2024 to visit a Rocket Lab factory and interview the ESCAPADE scientists when he expected the mission to launch that year.
Nov. 14, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ET
NASA’s latest robotic mission to Mars, ESCAPADE, should perhaps have been named the Great Escape, given how many times it has eluded doom.
The data that the mission eventually collects will provide clues about why Mars, which once possessed a thick atmosphere and flowing water on its surface, is today cold, dry and almost airless.
The mission, which launched on Thursday, could also serve as a “trailblazer” for how NASA could get more bang for its buck from its science missions, said Rob Lillis, the mission’s principal investigator.
NASA initially rejected Dr. Lillis’ proposal several years ago. Later, ESCAPADE — a shortening of Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers — only got the go-ahead from NASA because of a federal government shutdown in 2018.
And then it got kicked off its ride to space.
For all these troubles, the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, which is leading the mission, and Rocket Lab of Long Beach, Calif., together delivered two identical spacecraft to Kennedy Space Center in Florida last year — on time and on budget.
But the rocket that would eventually launch it — a brand-new design called New Glenn from Blue Origin — was not ready.
