Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
NASA’s new ESCAPADE mission is launching to Mars to help us better understand the Sun’s influence on Mars’ past and present. Its work could help protect future human explorers from potentially dangerous space weather when they set foot on the Red Planet.
For the first time, the mission will use two identical spacecraft to investigate how the solar wind interacts with Mars’ magnetic environment and how this interaction drives the planet’s atmospheric escape. Its observations will reveal the planet’s real-time response to space weather and how the Martian magnetosphere changes over time.
The ESCAPADE orbiters build on earlier Mars missions, such as NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) orbiter. The MAVEN mission has one spacecraft that has been studying Mars’ atmospheric loss since arriving at the Red Planet in 2014.
ESCAPADE is scheduled to launch no earlier than fall 2025 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Launch Complex 36 in Florida.
Find out more about the ESCAPADE mission: science.nasa.gov/mission/escapade
Music credit: "Antidote” by James Joshua Otto [PRS], “One More Chance” by Sergey Azbel [BMI], “Manifest” by Ben Niblett and Jonathan David Cotton [PRS] from Universal Production Music
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Producer/Editor: Lacey Young (eMITS), Beth Anthony (eMITS)
Writer: Vanessa Thomas (eMITS)
Narrator: Scott Wiessinger (eMITS)
Talent: Michele Cash (NASA), Rob Lillis (UC Berkeley), Jeff Parker (Advanced Space), Gwen Hanley (UC Berkeley)
Additional Video and Animations:
Advanced Space
Blue Origin
Rocket Lab
UC Berkeley
Sound Effects:
Pixabay
This video can be freely shared and downloaded at svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14920. While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, the music and some individual imagery may have been obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on such imagery may be found here: svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14920. For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media
If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: youtube.com/NASAExplorer
Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
· Instagram instagram.com/nasagoddard
· X twitter.com/NASAGoddard
· Facebook: facebook.com/NASA.GSFC
· Flickr flickr.com/photos/gsfc
NASA’s new ESCAPADE mission is launching to Mars to help us better understand the Sun’s influence on Mars’ past and present. Its work could help protect future human explorers from potentially dangerous space weather when they set foot on the Red Planet.
For the first time, the mission will use two identical spacecraft to investigate how the solar wind interacts with Mars’ magnetic environment and how this interaction drives the planet’s atmospheric escape. Its observations will reveal the planet’s real-time response to space weather and how the Martian magnetosphere changes over time.
The ESCAPADE orbiters build on earlier Mars missions, such as NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) orbiter. The MAVEN mission has one spacecraft that has been studying Mars’ atmospheric loss since arriving at the Red Planet in 2014.
ESCAPADE is scheduled to launch no earlier than fall 2025 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Launch Complex 36 in Florida.
Find out more about the ESCAPADE mission: science.nasa.gov/mission/escapade
Music credit: "Antidote” by James Joshua Otto [PRS], “One More Chance” by Sergey Azbel [BMI], “Manifest” by Ben Niblett and Jonathan David Cotton [PRS] from Universal Production Music
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Producer/Editor: Lacey Young (eMITS), Beth Anthony (eMITS)
Writer: Vanessa Thomas (eMITS)
Narrator: Scott Wiessinger (eMITS)
Talent: Michele Cash (NASA), Rob Lillis (UC Berkeley), Jeff Parker (Advanced Space), Gwen Hanley (UC Berkeley)
Additional Video and Animations:
Advanced Space
Blue Origin
Rocket Lab
UC Berkeley
Sound Effects:
Pixabay
This video can be freely shared and downloaded at svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14920. While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, the music and some individual imagery may have been obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on such imagery may be found here: svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14920. For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media
If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: youtube.com/NASAExplorer
Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
· Instagram instagram.com/nasagoddard
· X twitter.com/NASAGoddard
· Facebook: facebook.com/NASA.GSFC
· Flickr flickr.com/photos/gsfc
