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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

First CubeSats to travel the solar system snap 'Pale Blue Dot' homage [techcrunch.com]

The Insight launch [techcrunch.com] 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." [techcrunch.com] 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.

Pale Blue Dot [wikipedia.org].

Also at Business Insider [businessinsider.com].

Previously: NASA Launches InSight Mission to Study the Interior of Mars [soylentnews.org]

Related: New Horizons Captures the Farthest Image From Earth Ever Made [soylentnews.org]
New Horizons Spacecraft Will Take a "Pale Blue Dot" Photo in 2019 [soylentnews.org]

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