14 October 2019
First dedicated commercial smallsat mission to Mars unveiled
... craft could survive the long and harsh journey to another planet when its twin communications-relay CubeSats – MarCO-A and MarCO-B – successfully relayed data to Earth from Insight as it landed on the Martian surface. However, these diminutive duo...
08 May 2019
Tests start on first design of 'wafer scale' spacecraft
...InSight mission was the two shoe-boxed sized craft called MarCO that accompanied the probe on its journey to Mars. ESA... be mass manufactured at an incredibly low cost and packed into CubeSats and launched in “swarms” to collect vast amounts of data ...
21 December 2020
Innovative design could see CubeSats "steam-powered"
... of 10 x 10 x 10 centimetre cubic units have made a huge impact on space research since their introduction in 1999. Better known as CubeSats, these small satellites are often constructed from commercial off-the-shelf components making them relatively...
08 February 2019
Mars MarCO CubeSats go quiet
... for Mars Cube One, was the first interplanetary mission to use a class of mini-spacecraft called CubeSats. The MarCOs - nicknamed EVE and WALL-E, after characters from a Pixar film - served as communications relays during InSight's landing...
26 November 2018
Success for InSight as it performs a flawless landing on Mars
... InSight’s progress as it descended to the martian surface; MarCO-A and B, or MarCO for short. The experimental CubeSats, which were built by early career scientists from off-the... surface of Mars sent back to Earth via the MarCO CubeSats. Image: NASA
July 2018
The rise of interplanetary CubeSats
... spring out to generate about 40 W of power near Mars. Beyond acting as telecoms relays for Mars InSight, the MarCO CubeSats will be parked in a heliocentric orbit and will provide engineers and scientists valuable data of how these miniaturised...
