🛰️ Twin Mars probes take a shortcut past Earth
NASA's two ESCAPADE spacecraft fired their engines while swinging past Earth and are now heading to Mars, due in September 2027.
The mystery
Missions to Mars usually wait for a launch window that opens only about once every two years. So how did two small NASA probes that left Earth last November end up on course for Mars right now?
The answer
The ESCAPADE pair, nicknamed Blue and Gold, spent almost a year waiting near the Earth-Sun L2 point. On 7 and 9 November they swept close past Earth (Gold came within roughly 1,050 km) and burned their main engines at the closest point, using the Oberth effect to get the most push from each burn. NASA says no mission of its own had reached for Mars this way before. Both should arrive in September 2027, two days apart, to study how the solar wind affects Mars.
Now think about this
If spacecraft no longer need to wait two years for the planets to line up, how might that change the way we explore Mars?
