1,1,1,- 1University of California Berkeley, Space Sciences Laboratory, Berkeley, United States of America (rlillis@berkeley.edu)
- 2University of Colorado, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, CO, USA
- 3NASA Goddard Space flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
- 4Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, FL, USA
- 5University of Kyoto, Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere, Kyoto, Japan
- *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract
ESCAPADE is a twin-spacecraft low-cost Mars mission that will revolutionize our understanding of how space weather conditions drive magnetic structure and flows of energy and momentum throughout Mars’ unique hybrid magnetosphere, and how this interaction drives both ion escape and sputtering escape. ESCAPADE will measure magnetic field strength and topology, suprathermal ion distributions and electron flows, and thermal electron and ion densities, as well as possibly image visible aurora. Our 2-part scientific campaign of temporally and spatially-separated multipoint measurements in different regions of Mars’ diverse plasma environment, will allow us to untangle spatial from temporal variability, characterize short-term variability, and unravel the cause-and-effect of solar wind control of magnetospheric structure and ion and sputtering escape for the first time.
ESCAPADE launched on November 13, 2025. Though it is a Mars mission, ESCAPADE’s journey begins with a 12 month “loiter” phase within ~2.5 million km of earth, primarily on the anti-sunward side, looping around the L2 Lagrange point and passing twice through the Earth’s magnetotail, at ~320 and again at ~80 earth radii. Instruments are due to be turned on in late February 2026, just prior to this first tail passage. ESCAPADE will provide the first two-point measurements of heliospheric conditions in these regions of space, addressing questions of solar wind and space weather structure on ~105 km scales and investigating distant magnetotail features, including spatial extent, dependence on solar wind conditions, and the existence of reconnection in the distant magnetotail. In November 2026, ESCAPADE will execute Oberth maneuvers at a ~500 km perigee to start their interplanetary journey, arriving at Mars in September 2027 and beginning their science mission in spring 2028. This presentation will focus on first results from the plasma instruments in the near-Earth heliospheric environment.
Robert Lillis, Shannon Curry, Shaosui Xu, Takuya Hara, David Curtis, Ellen Taylor, Sasha Courtade, Mark Lewis, Brett Bonelli, Jeff Parker, Dan Cosgrove, Abhi Tripathi, Christophe Mandy, Karan Sarda, Sarah Blyde, Aroh Barjatya, Nathan Graves, Jared Espley, Jacob Gruesbeck, Roberto Livi, Phyllis Whittlesey, Gwen Hanley, Christopher Fowler, Ed Thiemann, David Brain, Yuki Harada, Ronan Modolo, Paul Withers, Yingjuan Ma, Christopher Edwards, Christopher Haberle, Laura Lee.
How to cite: Lillis, R., Xu, S., Curry, S., Hara, T., Livi, R., Whittlesey, P., Espley, J., Gruesbeck, J., Barjatya, A., Hanley, G., and Yusuke, E. and the The ESCAPADE team: Not just a Mars mission: First measurements from ESCAPADE in the Near-Earth Heliosphere and Distant Magnetotail. , EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-5832, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-5832, 2026.
