Tiny Cubesat Snaps Photo of Mars for 1st Time Ever

Tiny Cubesat Snaps Photo of Mars for 1st Time Ever

Tiny Cubesat Snaps Photo of Mars for 1st Time Ever







		A small spacecraft approaching Mars has taken a photo of its target, marking the first time a cubosat has captured an image of the Red Planet.

		One of the two cubes of Mars the size of a NASA briefcase (MarCO) cubesats It acquired the image on October 2, when it was about 8 million miles (12.8 million kilometers) from the Red Planet, officials of the agency said.

		The MarCO twins - officially known as MarCO-A and MarCO-B, but dubbed "Eve" and "Wall-E", respectively, after the characters from the 2008 Pixar movie "Wall-E", released with NASA's InSight Mars lander in early May. The main objective of the MarCO mission is to demonstrate that the Cubesats, whose operations to date have been restricted to Earth orbit, can make the long journey to the Red Planet. Mission team members have said that their success could help pave the way for much greater activity in deep space by small, low-cost spacecraft.

The[[Mars InSight: the mission of NASA to probe the core of the red planet (Gallery)]

		"We've been waiting six months to get to Mars," said MarCO mission manager Cody Colley of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. he said in a statement. "The cruise phase of the mission is always difficult, so you take all the small winnings when they come in. Finally, seeing the planet is definitely a great victory for the team."





						


Annotated version of the MarCO Mars photo of October 2, 2018, which identifies the different parts of the spacecraft visible in the image.

            						    Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech 


		MarCO-B (Wall-E) took the newly launched image to test the exposure settings of a wide-angle camera, NASA officials added in the same statement. 

		The MarCO duo will attempt to transmit source data to Earth from InSight during the landing attempt on Mars, which will take place on November 26. But this is not a crucial duty; Other spacecraft from NASA, such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, will also do this work.

		Eve and Wall-E will not attempt their own landing; rather, they will fly to Mars on November 26. Your mission will come to an end, after the engineers analyze and evaluate the data on the health and performance of the cubesats.

		The name of InSight is short for "Inner exploration using seismic investigations, geodesy and heat transport". The lander will measure the heat flux of the subsoil and control the "marsquakes", gathering data that will reveal much about the Structure and interior composition of the red planet..

		This information, in turn, should shed light on the formation and evolution of rocky planets in general, mission team members have said.



	Mike Wall's book on the search for extraterrestrial life. "Out there" will be published on November 13 by Grand Central Publishing. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us @Spacedotcom or Facebook. Originally published in Space.com.

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