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November 13, 2025<\/p>\n
4 min read<\/p>\n
This Mars-Bound Spacecraft Will Test Jared Isaacman\u2019s Vision for NASA<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s presumptive next leader wants to outsource more of the space agency\u2019s interplanetary science. The newly launched ESCAPADE mission to Mars offers a sanity check for those plans<\/p>\n
By Morgan McFall-Johnsen edited by Lee Billings<\/span><\/p>\n NASA\u2019s ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) mission launched at 3:55 p.m. EST atop a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.<\/p>\n Blue Origin\u2019s New Glenn rocket just launched a small trial of the kind of space agency envisioned by Jared Isaacman, the tech billionaire and private astronaut whom President Donald Trump has renominated to lead NASA.<\/p>\n On Thursday afternoon the twin orbiters of the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission drifted out of New Glenn\u2019s fairing and into space\u2014on their way to map Mars\u2019s interactions with the \u201csolar wind\u201d of charged particles flowing from the sun.<\/p>\n The science is almost a secondary priority, though. Built mostly by the aerospace firm Rocket Lab, launched by Blue Origin and led by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, ESCAPADE is also a test to see if a mishmash of academic and commercial teams can send a twin-orbiter mission to Mars for under $100 million. It debuts as Isaacman makes his case for a NASA with more low-cost, outsourced science missions.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n As the final installment in NASA\u2019s largely unsuccessful Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program, however, ESCAPADE\u2019s risk of failure is high. Its first few weeks in space, as controllers activate and test the twin spacecraft, will be especially nail-biting.<\/p>\n \u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to say it\u2019s a make-or-break moment\u201d for NASA\u2019s push to cut costs, says Jack Kiraly, director of government relations at the Planetary Society. \u201cIt\u2019s just another data point on whether or not this is a viable path to do high-level, important science.\u201d<\/p>\n After launching ESCAPADE into orbit, New Glenn\u2019s booster stuck its first-ever landing, touching down on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean and bringing Blue Origin a step closer to the reusability that has catapulted SpaceX into global launch dominance.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in Long Beach, Calif., Rocket Lab mission controllers waited tensely for the first ping of data from ESCAPADE\u2019s orbiters.<\/p>\n The last SIMPLEx mission, called Lunar Trailblazer, spun out and lost contact shortly after its liftoff in February. Two prior missions also failed soon after launch. One never even made it to launch and was indefinitely shelved.<\/p>\n In a similar program\u2014Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), which called for companies to pitch and run their own moon-landing missions\u2014only one of five so far has fully succeeded.<\/p>\n Despite this dismal track record, Isaacman wants more.<\/p>\n The tech billionaire did not respond to a request for comment from Scientific American. But earlier this month he clarified his intentions for NASA after the leak of his controversial \u201cProject Athena\u201d plan for overhauling the agency.<\/p>\n In a long post on X clarifying the plan\u2019s provisional nature, Isaacman confirmed that he wants to \u201cexpand the CLPS-style approach across planetary science.\u201d He added that it\u2019s \u201cbetter to have 10 x $100 million missions and a few fail than a single overdue and costly $1B+ mission\u201d\u2014a dig at NASA\u2019s traditional approach to space science.<\/p>\n But Kiraly sees this as \u201ca misunderstanding of what science is,\u201d adding that \u201c10 $100-million projects don\u2019t necessarily equal $1 billion.\u201d Compared with NASA\u2019s multibillion-dollar Mars rovers and space telescopes that have made major scientific breakthroughs, the combined efforts of CLPS and SIMPLEx have delivered scarcely any science returns at all.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t necessarily mean such programs aren\u2019t worth it. NASA has been betting for years that companies can eventually run major missions for cheaper, and Isaacman apparently intends to double down on that wager.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to see more planetary science, and if the way to do that right is through these new contracting methods and new providers, then great,\u201d Kiraly says.<\/p>\n Isaacman\u2019s approach would be good news for Rocket Lab, which is set up to run future missions end-to-end\u2014building, launching and operating in-house.<\/p>\n \u201cRocket Lab is ideally positioned to bring more interplanetary missions within reach,\u201d says Rocket Lab spokesperson Morgan Connaughton. \u201cBy reducing reliance on third-party suppliers, we can drive down costs and streamline production to deliver hardware faster.\u201d<\/p>\n Rocket Lab will power up the two ESCAPADE spacecraft over the next few weeks, as the two probes cruise toward Lagrange point 2, or L2. This is a region of gravitational quiescence about a million miles from Earth, where ESCAPADE will linger for a year awaiting a more favorable alignment between Earth and Mars.<\/p>\n After ESCAPADE settles into its temporary stay at L2, the mission controllers and scientists of the Space Sciences Laboratory at U.C. Berkeley will take over. For a few weeks, in sporadic windows of communication through NASA\u2019s Deep Space Network, they\u2019ll turn on ESCAPADE\u2019s four instruments to ensure each is ready for prime time.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you can demonstrate that you can go to Mars with two spacecraft for around $100 million, that greatly bolsters the case for more commercial efforts, more university efforts,\u201d Abhi Tripathi told Scientific American in September. \u201cThat message, I think, resonates with many in the current leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n ESCAPADE won\u2019t be the end of low-cost, outsourced planetary science at NASA. Four CLPS missions are slated to launch next year. If they go well, they\u2019ll turn around that program\u2019s success rate.<\/p>\n It will be a year before the two ESCAPADE spacecraft fire their engines to begin the nine-month journey to Mars. By then, the question of who runs NASA will hopefully be settled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" November 13, 2025 4 min read This Mars-Bound Spacecraft Will Test Jared Isaacman\u2019s Vision for NASA NASA\u2019s presumptive next leader wants to outsource more of the space agency\u2019s interplanetary science. The newly launched ESCAPADE mission to Mars offers a sanity check for those plans By Morgan McFall-Johnsen edited by Lee Billings NASA\u2019s ESCAPADE (Escape and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[695,19149,19259,5768,3164,3331,367,1101,3998,2207],"class_list":{"0":"post-33683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-commercial","9":"tag-glenn","10":"tag-isaacmans","11":"tag-jared","12":"tag-launch","13":"tag-nasa","14":"tag-rocket","15":"tag-space","16":"tag-tests","17":"tag-vision"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
A Trial-and-Error Plan for Planetary Science<\/h2>\n
ESCAPADE\u2019s Next Steps<\/h2>\n