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A satellite the size of a briefcase tested at Cal Poly recently captured a historic photo of Mars, nearly 250 million kilometers from the Earth.
A wide-angle camera connected to one of two identical CubeSat satellites took the photo on October 3 at about 8 million kilometers from Mars as a test of its exposure parameters, according to a Cal Poly press release .
The satellites carry the names MarCO-A and MarCO-B – the abbreviation of Mars Cube One – but they have been dubbed "Eve" and "Wall-E" by their engineers, the statement said. (The satellites share their nicknames with a pair of robots from the 2008 "WALL-E" animation movie)
In order to take the picture, the engineers had to program Wall-E for a rotation in space so that the bridge of his "body" is directed towards Mars, which is a moving target as he turns around the sun, according to the release.
One of NASA's MarCO spacecraft took this image of Mars on Oct. 3, 2018. The MarCO satellites were tested and prepared at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo in February.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
CubeSat technology was created by Jordi Puig-Suari, a former professor at Cal Poly, and Bob Twiggs, a Stanford professor, in 1999, making satellite launches available to universities, colleges and private companies around the world.
The MarCO satellites, which are 12 inches tall, 4 inches deep and 8 inches wide, arrived at the San Luis Obispo campus on February 28th, the statement said.
Engineers at Cal Poly and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory spent the next 17 days integrating the satellites into the deployment cases that ejected each CubeSat into space, the statement said.
The satellites were launched May 5 from Vandenberg Air Base aboard the United Launch Alliance Rocket Atlas V, said Cal Poly.
"We are waiting six months to arrive on Mars," said Cody Colley, head of the MarCO mission at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in the statement. "The cruising phase of the mission is always difficult, so you take all the little victories when they show up. Finally, seeing the planet is definitely a big win for the team. "
The MarCO mission hopes to produce more images as CubeSat satellites approach Mars before the planned flight over the planet on Nov. 26, the statement said.
According to Cal Poly, MarCO satellites are the first CubeSats to travel in the depths of space.
"Nobody could have imagined that 10 or 20 years ago," Ryan Nugent, an aerospace engineer at Cal Poly, said in the statement.
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