Lower-cost space missions like NASA’s ESCAPADE are starting to deliver exciting science – but at a price in risk and trade‑offs

Lower-cost space missions like NASA’s ESCAPADE are starting to deliver exciting science – but at a price in risk and trade‑offs

by Ari Koeppel, Dartmouth College, [This article first appeared in The Conversation, republished with permission] After a yearslong series of setbacks, NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, or ESCAPADE, mission has finally begun its roundabout journey to Mars. Launched on Nov. 13, 2025, aboard Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, ESCAPADE’s twin probes will map the planet’s magnetic field and study how the solar wind – the str…