https://rocketlabcorp.com/updates/so-youre-in-space-and-on-the-way-to-mars-what-next/ So you’re in space and on the way to Mars, what next? When a rocket lifts off it’s a heart-stopping, breath-taking moment. It marks the culmination of years of work, usually by hundreds of people, who have designed, built and tested a launch vehicle, and a spacecraft, and planned complex trajectories. There are few phrases that generate such a mix of elation, relief, and pride for those in the space industry as “payload deployed.” But once the excitement of launch passes and a spacecraft is safely in orbit, what next? The real fun begins for a spacecraft operations team. On November 13th, 2025, Blue and Gold, the two spacecraft Rocket Lab built for NASA and the University California Berkeley Space Sciences Lab’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars, were successfully launched to a high orbit barely captured by Earth’s gravity. In the days that followed, our spacecraft operators methodically worked their way through spacecraft commissioning, a process that gets all subsystems on the spacecraft up and running. This includes stabilizing the spacecraft orientation, deploying solar arrays, and powering up flight computers, multiple antennas, guidance and navigation sensors and actuators. In addition, we’ve been testing all the various modes and orientations we’ll use over the mission, as well as testing both the ‘A’ and ‘B’ redundant sides of the spacecraft that provide long-term mission resilience. Finally, our team began preparing the propulsion systems for the Blue and Gold for TCMs, or Trajectory Correction Maneuvers. This is the process of igniting the spacecraft engines for short duration burns to slightly adjust the spacecraft trajectories to ensure they’re on a perfect path to Mars. Nominally, 29 burns are planned to get us to Mars, then another eight will be executed to adjust our orbits around the planet. Once Blue and Gold are in orbit around Mars, a few more station keeping burns will be needed to counter orbital decay that happens when the Martian atmosphere slowly decreases the spacecraft velocities through friction. But the duration of these burns, whether they're executed on the hypergolic main engine or on the cold gas reaction control system, and even whether we skip them altogether, depends on how accurate the initial orbital insertion from launch was, and how close the later burns are to our expectations. Keeping spacecraft in top shape for years takes some clever engineering and remarkable materials science. Just like in any electronic device, chips degrade, sensors drift, radios get noisy. On top of that, cosmic rays and the Sun’s own eruptions can upset electronics. And all parts of the spacecraft are sensitive to high and low temperatures. To prevent our propellant lines from freezing when they spend months facing the darkness of space, there are heaters and insulating blankets. Without these, components can get to temperatures of a hundred degrees below freezing or less. To prevent our pressurized tanks from exploding when they spend months facing the blazing heat of the Sun, they’re covered in reflective coatings. We make sure everything works for years on end by regularly checking the state of electronics, testing our valves to make sure they aren’t stuck, and have redundant components for critical parts such as computers, radios, star trackers, inertial measurement units, etc. But before all of that, we need to fire those engines up for the first time. Here's an overview of the current planned TCMs, though the dates and durations are subject to change: Trajectory Correction Maneuver 1 (TCM-1): - Expected date: December 2nd 2025 on Blue, December 8 th 2025 on Gold - 15 seconds long, consuming 2 kg of propellant to deliver 11.5m/s of delta V. - This is our initial demonstration maneuver to verify all systems perform as expected. Our fault management limits will be at their tightest to be conservative, based on margined modelling of how we expect the systems to perform. - Once it's executed, we'll update our engine performance models including Isp, or specific impulse, (i.e. fuel efficiency), thrust, and mass flow rates, as well as parameters specifying system performance such as temperatures, pressures and flow. Trajectory Correction Maneuver 2 (TCM-2): - Expected date: December 11 th 2025 on Blue and December 16 th 2025 on Gold - 257 seconds long, consuming ~33 kg of propellant to deliver 200m/s of delta V. - This is the big one. After we execute this burn, we will recalculate our mass margins and determine exactly how much mass we can bring to Mars. There are always small variations and tolerances in every design. So far, we have assumed the lowest design performance for the system and now we get to see just how much margin we have. The better our manufacturing, the more fuel we have in reserve to extend the science mission for as long as possible at Mars, enabling the UCB-SSL team to gather more data, giving scientists and researchers greater insights. For example, the efficiency of an engine is characterized by its Isp, measured in units of seconds. A few seconds more Isp (1% more Isp) could result in allowing us to bring 20kg more propellant at Mars, enough for half a year of station keeping in orbit. - Although this is a longer burn, we have room to adapt to any contingencies should it not go perfectly. Burning a few seconds short is easily fixable on the next trajectory correction maneuver. But if we don’t... that’s equivalent to missing Mars by 100,000 km. Trajectory Correction Maneuver 3 (TCM-3): - TCM-3 is tentatively planned as a final clean-up maneuver, but it may not be needed (10 m/s or less). TCM-3 is the last maneuver that Rocket Lab will be operating directly. Once it's complete (or if it gets skipped), we'll hand off control to the team at Berkeley to operate the rest of the mission, but we’ll be cheering them on all the way to Mars! Although TCM-3 is the last time Rocket Lab will be operating an engine maneuver, Blue and Gold still have some critical ones ahead. After patiently loitering in orbit at the Earth-Sun Lagrange Point 2 for around a year, Blue and Gold’s engines will ignite once again for a Trans-Mars Injection burn in November 2026, then after a 10 month cruise to the Red Planet they’ll undertake the Mars Orbit Insertion maneuvers in September 2027. Rocket Lab will be providing support to UC Berkeley for these two critical maneuvers.