A CubeSat at Mars

摘要

THE PHOTO ITSELF IS UNREMARKABLE, and tells US nothing about Mars we didn't know already. Yet MarCO-B's snapshot, taken a few days after Thanksgiving, is important-the first close-up of another planet taken by a CubeSat. Over the past 15 years, nearly a thousand of these small, cheap, modular satellites have been launched into Earth orbit to take pictures, test technology, and perform other simple tasks. The twin MarCOs, A and B, have the distinction of being the first CubeSats sent to interplanetary space. They survived the 300-million-mile journey to Mars, and half the battle was won right there.