The slingshot that flung Rocket Lab spacecraft toward Mars

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Rocket Lab won a Nasa contract to design and build two spacecraft, “Blue” and “Gold”, that will orbit Mars for the United States space agency’s “Escapade” (Escape and Plasma…

The Herald catches up with Sarah Blyde, the Long Beach-based Kiwi running Rocket Lab’s Mars mission for Nasa and UC Berkeley. In the video above Ryan Bridge talks to the company’s founder, Sir Peter Beck, about its record revenue, pending 100th Electron flight and whether he would climb aboard a rocket himself.

Rocket Lab won a Nasa contract to design and build two spacecraft, “Blue” and “Gold”, that will orbit Mars for the United States space agency’s “Escapade” (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) mission.

The goal: to better understand the effect of the solar wind on the Red Planet’s atmosphere to minimise communications interference when contacting Earth, and radiation risks when people ultimately land on the Martian surface.

The Kiwi-American company duly delivered Blue and Gold to the US space agency on schedule for a launch during a rare alignment in Earth and Mars’ orbits, which only happens once every 26 months.

The launch was to take place from Cape Canaveral, on a New Glenn rocket built by the Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin, in September 2024.

But it was scrubbed on concerns the rocket would not be ready in time.

By the time the New Glenn rocket was finally launched, on November 13, 2025, a straight-shot between Earth and Mars was no longer possible.

“If you think of it as an athletics track, Mars was on the wrong side,” says Sarah Blyde, Rocket Lab’s programme director for the Escapade mission.

It was a poser for Rocket Lab, Nasa, and the US space agency’s partner on the mission: UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory.

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