ESCAPADE’s Bold Gamble: How Low‑Cost Mars Missions Trade Safety for More Science

After a yearslong series of setbacks, NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission has finally begun its long, looped journey to Mars. Launched on Nov. 13, 2025, aboard Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, ESCAPADE’s twin probes will map Mars’s magnetic environment and study how the solar wind — the stream of charged particles from the Sun — has stripped the planet’s atmosphere over billions of years.

Personal Connection and the Mission’s Role

I was especially invested in this launch: as a doctoral student I helped develop the VISIONS camera packages that fly on each ESCAPADE spacecraft. That personal stake makes the mission’s early success and remaining risks all the more poignant.

What ESCAPADE Will Do

ESCAPADE’s two small spacecraft will take coordinated measurements of Mars’ magnetic field and the interaction between that field and the solar wind. The goal is to refine our understanding of how atmospheric escape has shaped Mars’ climate history — an important but focused scientific objective compared with larger, flagship missions.

How Low Cost Was Achieved

ESCAPADE is a SIMPLEx (Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration) project and is classified by NASA as a Class D mission — meaning it accepts higher technical and schedule risk to hold down costs. By the end of its science phase in 2029, the mission is projected to total about US$94.2 million.

Cost savings came from several choices: a small, tightly focused instrument suite; low spacecraft mass; extensive use of commercial off‑the‑shelf components; university‑funded instruments (the VISIONS cameras); and private sector partners. Rocket Lab built much of the spacecraft hardware, Advanced Space LLC developed the trajectory plan, and Blue Origin provided a discounted ride on New Glenn’s flight test.

Risk, Trade‑Offs and Historical Context

SIMPLEx-style missions embrace a quantity-over-per-mission-quality model: more missions at lower individual cost, accepting that some will fail. Of five SIMPLEx missions selected to date, three failed after launch and a fourth remains in indefinite storage — underscoring the program’s vulnerability to cost and schedule pressures.

Since NASA introduced the Class D designation in 2009, 21 missions have launched under that category. None launched on their original schedule; only four came in under budget, and four were canceled before launch. Those statistics emphasize that the savings come with systemic risk: compressed schedules, less conservative testing, and tighter contractor budgets.

Why This Approach Matters

NASA and other agencies face some of the tightest science budgets in decades while political priorities shift funding toward human spaceflight. Meanwhile, a commercial launch industry offering reusable rockets and standardized components has helped make lower‑cost missions viable again. Proponents argue that a portfolio of many smaller missions — paired with occasional large, technology‑pushing flagships — could sustain scientific progress under fiscal constraints.

Critics caution that small missions rarely drive the major technology innovations that enable transformational science. Flagship projects such as the James Webb Space Telescope or Europa Clipper advance new technologies and materials that later benefit both science and broader society.

Launch Challenges and Operational Hiccups

ESCAPADE’s path to orbit was far from smooth. The launch campaign encountered weather and ground‑equipment scrubs, a powerful solar storm that closed a launch window, and FAA launch restrictions tied to a government shutdown that were only resolved with a last‑minute exemption. After liftoff on Nov. 13, New Glenn reached orbit, and controllers recovered communications following a brief period of receiver misalignment.

The same year saw record commercial activity: Cape Canaveral logged a record 94 launches in 2025, including many Falcon 9 flights by SpaceX. Reusable rockets and competition among providers help keep launch prices down — a central enabler of small science missions like ESCAPADE.

What Success Would Mean

If ESCAPADE’s twin spacecraft reach Mars and deliver useful data, the mission will be a strong example of how minimalist, commercially driven missions can broaden the scope of planetary exploration at lower cost. But even a string of SIMPLEx successes would not replace the need for flagship missions, which remain essential to develop new technologies and address the most ambitious scientific questions.

Bottom line: ESCAPADE is an experiment in portfolio balance — testing whether many lower‑cost, higher‑risk missions, supplemented by occasional flagship programs, can sustain planetary science in an era of constrained budgets.

This article was originally published by The Conversation. Ari Koeppel, Dartmouth College, was a member of the VISIONS camera team and has received NASA research funding. He currently works with The Planetary Society.