Cubesats could change the space industry
(ORDO NEWS) — The first image (below) is a low-resolution image of Mars taken by NASA‘s MarCO-B (Mars Cube One “B”) experimental cubesat* from a distance of 7,600 kilometers during its flyby of the Red Planet on November 26, 2018.
MarCO-B (image below) and its twin MarCO-A were sent to Mars along with NASA’s InSight lander to test two things:
- Cubesats can be used as low cost repeaters (communications equipment connecting two or more radio transmitters) to provide reliable communications between a spacecraft and the Earth ;
- Cubesats could be used as cheap and fast-launching self-contained spacecraft that could be sent to different parts of the solar system, including, for example, the orbits of various satellites of the gas giants.
MarCO-B and MarCO-A, having become the first ever cubesats outside the earth’s orbit, proved that they can act as repeaters and independent spacecraft.
Cubesat is a format of ultra-small satellites, the dimensions of which can be only 5 × 5 × 5 centimeters, and the mass does not exceed 250 grams (cubesat of the PocketCube format).
MarCO’s twin Cubesats measured 10 x 20 x 30 centimeters and weighed approximately 13.5 kilograms each.
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