NASA loses contact with the small satellites that accompany the InSight mission on Mars

Two small satellites that joined the InSight mission en route to Mars have not been heard for more than a month, but the experimental mission remains a major success for NASA.

Mars Cube One, or MarCO, consisting of two 13.6 kg satellites called WALL-E and EVE. Relatively economical satellites were the first CubeSats to penetrate the space between planets. The mission could predict the future of a spacecraft by taking away more CubeSats on future trips.

CubeSats satellites are an increasingly common type of satellite designed to reduce costs and allow researchers to place scientific instruments in launchers. with a reserve capacity. Standard CubeSats contain one liter of volume, approximately 983 cm³, for placement of instruments and can not weigh more than 1.33 kg. However, CubeSats are scalable. WALL-E and EVE each contained six cube units. More than a thousand CubeSats have been released.

NASA scientists wanted to know if the CubeSats could survive in deep space as part of the InSight Mars Lander mission. They expected the satellites to reach Mars and monitor InSight around the landing, serving as a backup relay for transmitting radio data to the Earth in near real-time. InSight would use the Mars Recognition Orbiter of Trust, which has been part of the Red Planet since 2006, to transmit data to our planet, whether CubeSats has arrived or not – but WALL-E has successfully sent data from every step of the descent of InSight. as well as the first image of the probe, while the EVE could perform some radio measurements.

NASA lost contact with WALL-E on December 29 and EVE on January 4. It is possible that the antennas of the probes do not point correctly towards the Earth or that their solar panels do not point towards the Sun and that their batteries are dead, according to the press release.

But missions have shown that CubeSats are a viable option for transmitting data from space to Earth, and future missions could use their own communications relay to monitor landings. June and September when approaching the Sun, according to a statement. However, if there is no answer, know that these two CubeSats have died victorious, having successfully fulfilled their mission.