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Image captured by MarCO-B CubeSat about 6,000 kilometers away during its flight over the Red Planet. Image by NASA / JPL-Caltech
According to NASA, two small MarCO-type CubeSats (Mars Cube One) that have been superimposed on the Mars InSight lander have achieved their primary goal.
These experimental space-sized spacecraft were launched with NASA's InSight lander in May and became the first small satellites to travel in deep space. They were sent on mission to serve as communication relays for NASA's InSight spacecraft, which they successfully completed.
After arriving on Mars on November 26th, the twin satellites – dubbed EVE (MarCO-A) and WALL-E (MarCO-B) – relayed the information from the Insight lander as it descended to the Martian surface. MarCO-B also returned an image of Mars as it flew about 6,000 kilometers above the surface of the planet.
"WALL-E and EVE worked as expected," said Andy Klesh, chief engineer of MarCO, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which built the CubeSats.
"They have been a great test of how CubeSats can serve as" relays "in future missions, providing engineers with instant feedback during a landing."
CubeSats are a type of spacecraft, much smaller in size than the big, traditional ships. In recent years, dozens of CubeSats have been launched on Earth's orbit using the mass of payload available at the time of launching a larger spacecraft.
According to NASA, CubeSats twins have used their antennas and experimental radios to offer NASA scientists another way to monitor the InSight landing. The signals they sent took only eight minutes to travel from Mars to Earth. NASA Mars orbits, which were not properly positioned, would have taken much longer to send signals to the Earth.
Although the CubeSat targets have achieved their primary goals, NASA scientists will continue to collect additional data on each CubeSat in the coming weeks. The NASA team will see how much fuel remains in each CubeSat and will also perform a detailed analysis of the relay's capabilities.
According to NASA, the twin satellites, after flying over Mars, will continue to revolve around the Sun. Scientists will also explore any possibility of using them to fly over an asteroid. However, all these possibilities will depend on the health of the cubesats in the interplanetary space.
In any case, NASA scientists can learn more about the current course of these tiny satellites.
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