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NASA Launches CubeSats
Towards Mars!
May 5, 2018
By Lora Snow
Two CubeSats are on their way towards Mars. This is the first time CubeSats have ever gone on an interplanetary mission. Most never go beyond low earth orbit.
NASA launched the miniature satellites on the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 4:05 a.m. PDT (7:05 a.m. EDT) along with the Insight lander. For more about the InSight mission, see NASA Launches InSight Mission to Mars!
Artist's rendering of MarCo spacecraft flying over Mars with Earth in the distance. Courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The identical CubeSats, MarCO-A and MarCO-B, or Wall-E and Eva, are about the size of a briefcase. They separated from the rocket shortly after take-off, as the InSight lander did. The rocket launched them on a trajectory towards Mars, but they are flying the rest of the way there on their own. and will need to make course corrections along the way. To do this, they will use fire extinguisher fluid as thruster propellent, like the robot in Disney’s “Wall-E” movie, hence their nicknames.
If they make it to Mars they will be tasked with transmitting data about Insight while it enters the Martian atmosphere and descends to the planet’s surface.
The CubeSats, are not necessary for the InSight Mission to be successful. InSight will send information to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) about its entry, descent, and landing operations via the UHF radio band. And MRO will forward the information to earth using a radio frequency in the X band. This process could take over an hour, however, because it cannot receive information over one band while transmitting over another band.
The radios on the MarCO CubeSats, on the other hand, provide both UHF and X-band functions capable of immediately relaying information that it receives over UHF. They’re capable of transmitting information about the InSight lander back to earth in near real time.
If the CubeSats are successful in their mission, this type of technology could be used for future missions to Mars as well as many other applications to explore and study our solar system, according to NASA.
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NASA's First Deep Space Cube Sats. Courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech