Image of Earth and the Moon from NASA’s Marco B (Mars Cube One) Satellite

The first image captured by one of NASA’s Mars Cube One (MarCO) CubeSats. The image, which shows both the CubeSat’s unfolded high-gain antenna at right and the Earth and its moon in the center, was acquired by MarCO-B on May 9. 2018. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

If this image doesn’t give you pause, we’re not sure what will? How important can our daily concerns actually be?

Marco-A and Marco-B are twin cube sats – tiny satellites about the size of a briefcase (remember briefcases?). Earlier this month we took a break from our publishing and watched the live stream launch of the InSight mission from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to Mars; the first inter-planetary mission ever launched from the West Coast.

The Mars Insight mission is scheduled to land on the surface of Mars in November and deploy extraordinarily sensitive instruments to measure “marsquake” seismic activity and to gain a better understanding of the make-up of the deep interior structure and core of the planet.

Riding along on the Atlas V launch vehicle with the InSight lander were the two cube sats, Marco A&B. They are the first cube sats to be launched into deep space. Until now all cube sats have operated entirely in low earth orbit – no higher than 800 Km (495 miles) above the Earth. The picture above was taken from 1 million Km away!

The purpose of Marco A&B is to relay data from the InSight instruments on Mars back to earth. The photo was the first test of the high gain antenna on Marco-B to make sure it deployed correctly and everything is working as planned. The image itself was taken by a “fisheye” lens on Marco-B, thus you can see bits of the satellite around the edge of the photo.

Because of the size and shape limitations of cube satellites these high gain antennae are flat as a pancake – not the usual parabolic shape we associate with such, yet they worked as planned! Kudos to the young team at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) that designed and developed them. The test was obviously a success and it’s really so very cool.

An artist’s rendering of the twin Mars Cube One (MarCO) spacecraft on their cruise to Mars. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Right now Marco A&B are flying in formation a few miles behind and to the left and right of the InSight lander. Ultimately they will go into orbit around Mars in such a way that one of them will always be in communication range of the lander, relying real-time data as it descends through the Martian atmosphere. However, as NASA is in the “sure thing” business, Marco A&B win’t be the primary communications link to InSight once it’s on the planet’s surface. That job will be handled by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that has been orbiting Mars and functioning well since 2005.

Visit NASA.gov for everything you ever wanted to know about InSight and Marco A&B.