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    NASA’s First Image of Mars from a CubeSat

    October 23, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    One of NASA's twin MarCO spacecraft took this image of Mars on October 2 -- the first time a CubeSat, a kind of low-cost, briefcase-sized spacecraft -- has done so. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

    One of NASA’s twin MarCO spacecraft took this image of Mars on October 2 — the first time a CubeSat, a kind of low-cost, briefcase-sized spacecraft — has done so.
    Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

    NASA’s MarCO mission was designed to find out if briefcase-sized spacecraft called CubeSats could survive the journey to deep space. Now, MarCO – which stands for Mars Cube One – has Mars in sight. One of the twin MarCO CubeSats snapped this image of Mars on Oct. 3 – the first image of the Red Planet ever produced by this class of tiny, low-cost spacecraft. The two CubeSats are officially called MarCO-A and MarCO-B but nicknamed “EVE” and “Wall-E” by their engineering team.

    A wide-angle camera on top of MarCO-B produced the image as a test of exposure settings...

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