♦ Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launched two NASA satellites atop its giant New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. It successfully sending the US space agency's ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorer) mission on its journey to Mars by inserting the twin spacecraft into the designated loiter orbit. 

♦ The ESCAPADE twin spacecraft, built by Rocket Lab, will study how the magnetic environment of Mars is impacted by the Sun. It will investigate how a never-ending, million-mile-per-hour stream of particles from the Sun, known as the solar wind, has gradually stripped away much of the Martian atmosphere, causing the planet to cool and its surface water to evaporate. Led by the University of California, Berkeley, the mission will help NASA prepare for future human exploration of Mars.

♦ After a 10-month journey, ESCAPADE will arrive at Mars by September 2027, becoming the first coordinated dual-spacecraft mission to enter orbit around another planet. It will begin the science campaign in June 2028.

♦ Currently, Earth and Mars are positioned on opposite sides of the Sun, making interplanetary travel between them more challenging. Rather than heading directly to Mars, the twin spacecraft will first head to a location in space a million miles from Earth called Lagrange point 2, NASA explained. In November 2026, when the two planets align more closely in their orbits, NASA’s ESCAPADE spacecraft will swing back toward Earth and use its gravity to perform a slingshot manoeuvr, propelling itself toward Mars.