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Mars-bound CubeSats catch first glimpse of the Red Planet
These two little spacecraft are the first of their kind to venture into deep space, and now they've sent us back a post card of their first glimpse of the Red Planet.
The image, snapped by MarCO-B on October 3, shows Mars as a tiny, pale red dot towards the right of frame, much like the "Pale Blue Dot" photo they sent as they whizzed away from Earth. To line up the shot, the CubeSat had to be programmed to rotate in space to point the wide-angle camera towards Mars.
A few onboard instruments photobomb the image too: part of a thermal blanket can be seen at the top left, and below that the antenna feed peeks in. The right-hand side of the image is framed by the high gain antenna.
The photo was taken from a distance of about 8 million miles (12.8 million km), but interestingly the journey to Mars will still involve another 53 million miles (85 million km) because the Red Planet is moving away from the CubeSats.
Once they arrive at Mars, the two MarCOs will help relay communications back to Earth as the InSight lander touches down. That said, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) will do most of the heavy lifting there – the MarCO mission is mostly a test to see if CubeSats are able to survive the rigors of space travel.