Tiny Cubesat Snaps Photo of Mars for 1st Time Ever

[Judi Lynn]

By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | October 22, 2018 05:00pm ET

A tiny Mars-approaching spacecraft has snapped a photo of its target, marking the first time that a cubesat has ever captured an image of the Red Planet.

One of NASA's two briefcase-size Mars Cube One (MarCO) cubesats acquired the image on Oct. 2, when it was about 8 million miles (12.8 million kilometers) from the Red Planet, agency officials said.

The MarCO twins — officially known as MarCO-A and MarCO-B, but nicknamed "Eve" and "Wall-E," respectively, after characters in the 2008 Pixar film "Wall-E" — launched with NASA's InSight Mars lander in early May. The main goal of the MarCO mission is to prove that cubesats, whose operations to date have been restricted to Earth orbit, can indeed make the long trek to the Red Planet. Their success could help pave the way for much greater activity in deep space by small, low-cost spacecraft, mission team members have said. [Mars InSight: NASA's Mission to Probe Red Planet's Core (Gallery)]

"We've been waiting six months to get to Mars," MarCO mission manager Cody Colley, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. "The cruise phase of the mission is always difficult, so you take all the small wins when they come. Finally seeing the planet is definitely a big win for the team."

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