Sunday, July 05, 2015

MarCO: The First Interplanetary Cubesats


We have moved closer to having a new tool set to explore the planets. For several years, scientists and engineers have talked about using tiny spacecraft, known as CubeSats, for interplanetary missions. However, a number of daunting engineering challenges have stood between these ideas and reality. A pioneering mission was needed that would take on those challenges and prove the technologies.

Recently, NASA announced the Mars Cube One (MarCO) mission that will fly two CubeSat spacecraft past Mars as part of its larger InSight Mars mission. While the MarCO spacecraft will fulfill a specific role in the InSight mission, their real importance likely will be to prove that these tiny spacecraft can be used for deep space missions.


Obviously, the follow-on ought to be called POLO.  

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