NASA quietly sends two spacecraft to Mars — and theyre going a new way

The U.S. space agency has fallen silent amid the federal government shutdown, but it's about to slingshot a pair of robotic spacecraft to Mars.NASA's Escapade mission will test a new way of traveling to Mars. Instead of the traditional fuel-efficient route used by past missions — a narrow launch window every two years that leverages an alignment of the planets — the spacecraft will take a path that first carries them around a stable point between Earth and the sun. After a year of lo