NEW YORK: The rocket carrying NASA’s next Mars mission will also launch two potentially ground-breaking tagalong devices to the red planet, the space agency announced.
The InSight Lander will launch on a trip to Mars in March 2016 with two small satellites known as cubesats. Called MarCO (short for Mars Cube One), the two spacecraft are a technology demonstration designed to help with communications at the critical moment when InSight touches down on Mars.
While many cubesats have flown missions above Earth, this will mark the first time this tiny class of
The cubesats come equipped with two solar panels and a pair of radio antennas that can be used to beam back information about InSight’s Mars landing to Earth faster than traditional methods, NASA said.
The flyby MarCO mission may solve a key communications challenge for NASA.
InSight will communicate with NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter once it lands, and the orbiter will, in turn, send confirmation of the landing back to mission controllers on Earth.
However, because of its complex communications system, it might take the orbiter more than an hour to relay InSight’s information to Earth.
