MarCO

MarCO launched into space on May 5th, 2018 and has now completed its mission. Its primary destination was Mars, which it arrived at on November 26th, 2018 . Wherever MarCO goes, it carries its trusty cameras, radios, star tracker, and sun sensors. MarCO often chats with humans from NASA JPL.

MarCO are a twin pair of small space probes on a mission to test out new communication technologies during their flyby of Mars that coincides with the landing of InSight on the surface of Mars. At approximately the size of a briefcase, MarCO, also known as Mars Cube One, are the very first interplanetary small space probes. To move around, MarCO-A and MarCO-B use a propellant commonly found in fire extinguishers, which inspired their nicknames of WALL-E and Eve, the two Pixar robot characters. MarCO will use its antennas to listen to InSight as it lands and transmit the information back to Earth before any other space probe. After their flyby of Mars, they will orbit the Sun. The two space probes are trailblazers for future small space probes to explore other planets.

Worth Exploring:

an animated video about MarCO
an interview with two of the people who built MarCO

(top image: first photo captured by MarCO-B of Earth, the bright dot, and the Moon, the faint dot, NASA/JPL-Caltech)