The first Cubesats to visit another planet will end the mission on Mars today.

In May, two tiny pioneering satellites borrowed NASA's InSight lander to become the first small satellite to leave the friendly quarter of Earth, but today (November 26) they are nearing the end of their mission.

These satellites make up the $ 18.5 million Mars Cube One mission, or MarCO, a technology demonstration project based on the InSight geological mission, which aims to test the limits of cubesats the size of a briefcase not weighing than 10 kg. (13.6 kg) each.

"They have in fact achieved all their main objectives in terms of demonstrating the technologies we want to use," said John Baker, Program Office Manager for the MarCO Mission, at Space.com. "I am very happy with the results of the mission so far." [NASA’s InSight Mars Lander: Full Coverage]

During the mission, the small spaceship conquered the heart of the engineers of the team, who nicknamed the couple WALL-E and EVE after the robotic characters of the film Pixar "WALL-E". In an iconic scene from this film, they use puffs of fire extinguisher to dance in space. Depending on the type of fire extinguisher used by the fictional robots, it could be the same fuel as the MarCO satellites. In space, it is enough to release small amounts of compressed gas to direct such satellites.

Although satellites are twin and NASA uses two satellites for redundancy, satellites do not behave exactly the same, taking their name. "WALL-E was a little harder to control, and its cold gas system was a little less predictable, while EVE was very direct and performed very well," said Baker. .

Although fire extinguisher fuel is an endearing propulsion device, it is not powerful enough to drive MarCO satellites into orbit around the red planet. They will only fly over Mars, traveling less than 4,000 kilometers from its surface.

But the two will not make tourist visits during their flyover. in fact, their cameras will be disabled. Instead, if all goes according to plan, the satellites will collect InSight's emissions during its perilous process of entry, descent and landing and retransfer them to Earth.

If MarCO succeeds in this task, InSight engineers will have many hours of anxious waiting. "Due to this delayed gratification, we decided to take with us two astronauts called" MarCO spacecraft, "said Tom Hoffman, NASA's InSight Project Manager, at a press conference held November 21. InSight does not rely on MarCO: if the relay pair fails, the larger Mars orbiters will wait for the same job.)

At every stage of their journey, the MarCO satellites have made their team proud, proving how small a technology can be exploited and where the cubesats can go. "MarCO has gathered a lot of new technologies and new features," said MarCO-B Mission Manager Anne Marinan at the November 21 press conference. "The team is thrilled with the way things have gone so far."

But is it today, it's really the end of the line for MarCO? Maybe not. The satellites will fly over Mars and continue their orbit around the sun, slightly removed from their previous trajectory by the gravity of the planet. Then, the team will have to use the extremely tiny satellite radio systems to locate each MarCO before establishing additional destinations.

"Once they have passed March, we will follow up to determine where they ended up," Baker said. "Then we'll see if there is an option for what they could do in the future in terms of the practical asteroid by which they could fly or something like that."

But even if the pair continues to float in space, MarCO engineers can learn more about the current course of satellites. At the present time, engineers do not even know how long cubesats can stay healthy in the interplanetary space, since MarCO satellites are the first to venture into the space today. .

"We want to know how long they will last," Baker said. "We put these things together fast enough. We did not use the traditional processes of major missions. "

Visit Space.com today for full coverage of the InSight landings on Mars.

Space.com editor Tariq Malik contributed to the writing of this article. Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her. @meghanbartels. follow us @Spacedotcom and Facebook. Original article on Space.com.