Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
When NASA’s InSight lander departs for Mars next year, it won’t be traveling alone, as a pair of CubeSats will also make the journey. This will make them the first mini-probes to make the journey to deep space, officials from the US space agency announced on Friday.
The companion satellites are known as Mars Cube One (MarCO), and according to Engadget, they are briefcase-sized probes that measure 14.4 x 9.5 x 4.6 inches and are made up of six four-inch square cube satellites. InSight and MarCO will operate independently from one another, but will be carried into space together onboard an Atlas V rocket in September 2016.
The MarCO satellites are communication relays, the website added, and are programmed to fly over Mars while the lander is descending to the planet’s surface. They will serve as InSight’s link to the ground team, allowing it to transmit messages back to Earth directly rather than having to radio information to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) first.
CubeSat use on future Mars missions
In a statement, Jim Green, the director of planetary science division at the NASA headquarters in Washington, said that the CubeSats are “an experimental capability” that had been “added to the InSight mission,” but that it will not play an essential role in the mission’s success or failure.
During InSight’s landing, it will transmit information in the UHF radio band to MRO, and the orbiter will forward EDL data to Earth using an X-band radio frequency. However, it is unable to send and receive data at the same time, meaning that it would take more than an hour to transmit confirmation back to ground control.
MarcCO, however, has a softball-sized radio that provides both both UHF (receive only) and X-band (receive and transmit) functions, the agency said. The CubeSats, which are equipped with a high-gain flat-panel antenna that directs radio waves similar to a parabolic dish antenna, are able to immediately relay the data they receive over UHF back to Earth.
If the CubeSats are successful, it could open the door for similar tag-along communication relay devices for use on future Mars missions, NASA said. Also, if this project can verify that this type of miniature probe can be used on interplanetary missions, it could open the door for their use in other ways to help explore parts of the solar system.
—–
Follow redOrbit on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest.
Comments