Posted on 02/07/2019 11:46:04 AM PST by BenLurkin
The first two tiny satellites to ever go interplanetary have fallen silent in deep space for some unknown reason, and it’s likely we may never hear from them again. But for NASA, which launched the probes last year, this loss of communication isn’t considered a failure. Before the pair went quiet, these vehicles demonstrated that tiny satellites could become critical tools for exploring other worlds deep within our Solar System.
The silent satellites are the two MarCO probes — nicknamed EVE and WALL-E from Pixar’s sci-fi movie — which flew to Mars along with NASA’s InSight lander last year. Both MarCOs are modified CubeSats, a type of standardized small satellite about the size of a cereal box used for space research. Before the InSight mission, CubeSats had only ever orbited around Earth, but NASA wanted to know if these types of satellites could be useful on deep-space missions, too.
These quick notifications were a luxury that NASA wouldn’t have had without the MarCO satellites. Other, larger spacecraft in orbit around Mars were gathering data of InSight’s landing, too. But because of their locations and the positions of the planets, it took a while for these vehicles to send that info back to Earth. For instance, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been in orbit around the Red Planet since 2006, observed the InSight landing from the Martian skies but then quickly dipped below the horizon. It wasn’t able to send back the data until three hours after the landing.
(Excerpt) Read more at theverge.com ...
Aliens have found our tiny satellites tasty, and they are hungry for more.
DUH! They hit that wall at the end of the universe. /s
The universe is really a YUGE “Truman Show”.
I’m going to guess that when used around the Earth the magnetic field, being stronger than Mars’ field, provided better protection from EM radiation. So while they worked around Mars for a time, they wore out faster.
We have cereal boxes used for space research?
Sentence needs some commas, Mr. reporter.
*ping*
Thanks fieldmarshaldj.
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