Rocket Lab says it built the ESCAPADE spacecraft

Rocket Lab said on November 10, 2026 that it designed and built NASA's ESCAPADE spacecraft Blue and Gold, and that each completed an approximately 10-minute trans-Mars injection burn on November 7 and November 9. The company said the burns ran with much greater than 99 percent overall accuracy and a final attitude error of less than 1 degree. It schedules Mars orbit insertion for both spacecraft in September 2027 and a first science formation in 2028, without pairing each date to a spacecraft.