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First CubeSats to travel the solar system snap 'Pale Blue Dot' homage:
The Insight launch earlier this month had a couple stowaways: a pair of tiny CubeSats that are already the farthest such tiny satellites have ever been from Earth by a long shot. And one of them got a chance to snap a picture of their home planet as an homage to the Voyager mission's famous "Pale Blue Dot." It's hardly as amazing a shot as the original but it's still cool.
The CubeSats, named MarCO-A and B, are an experiment to test the suitability of pint-size craft for exploration of the solar system; previously they have only ever been deployed into orbit.
That changed on May 5, when the Insight mission took off, with the MarCO twins detaching on a similar trajectory to the geology-focused Mars lander. It wasn't long before they went farther than any CubeSat has gone before.
Also at Business Insider.
Previously: NASA Launches InSight Mission to Study the Interior of Mars
Related: New Horizons Captures the Farthest Image From Earth Ever Made
New Horizons Spacecraft Will Take a "Pale Blue Dot" Photo in 2019
(Score: 2) by rigrig on Wednesday May 16 2018, @08:59AM (1 child)
Looks like they didn't learn anything from the Mars Climate Orbiter failure after all.
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 16 2018, @09:06AM
Let's wait and see if it crashes into Mars first. Or maybe that Tesla Roadster out there.
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