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Mars Cube One (A & B)

Mechanical engineer Joel Steinkraus and systems engineer Farah Alibay, from JPL, holding a full scale model of Mars Cube One (MarCO)
Mission type	Communications relay
Operator	NASA
Spacecraft properties
Spacecraft type	6U CubeSat
Manufacturer	JPL
Start of mission
Launch date	to be announced
Rocket	Atlas V 401
Launch site	Vandenberg Air Force Base SLC-3E
Contractor	United Launch Alliance
Orbital parameters
Reference system	Heliocentric
Epoch	Planned

Mars Cube One (or MarCO) is a Mars flyby mission consisting of two nanospacecrafts, of a size that JPL has referred to as a "6U CubeSat", that is planned for launch in 2018 or later alongside NASA's InSight Mars lander mission. Mars Cube One is intended to provide a communications link to Earth for InSight during mission critical entry, descent, and landing when InSight will be out of sight from the Earth. Mars Cube One is expected to be the first spacecraft built to the CubeSat form to operate beyond Earth orbit. CubeSats are small cubic components that are built up to create low cost, quickly developed, and easily developed satellites, perfect for operating under low earth orbit. They have many different purposes for research, including: biological endeavors, mapping missions, etc. CubeSat Technology was developed by California Polytechnic University and Stanford University, with the purpose of quick and easy projects that would allow students as make use of the technology. They are often packed as part of the payload for a larger mission, making them even more cost effective.

Launch

The launch of Mars Cube One is being managed by NASA's Launch Services Program. The launch was originally scheduled for 4 March 2016 on an Atlas V 401, but the mission was postponed to 2018 after a major test failure of an InSight instrument.

Objectives/Mission

MarCO A and B monitoring InSight landing (artist concept)

Over the years, there have been several CubeSats that have been flown around Earth’s orbit, but earlier this year, NASA announced that they plan to launch a CubeSat that will go beyond the orbit of the Earth. This will allow for unique data outside of the Earth’s atmosphere and orbit. One of the Cube One’s missions is to provide crucial communication data while the 2018 InSight mission is in the “entry, descent, landing (EDL) phase.” Instead of several hours for the information to relay back to Earth, the MarCO will “rapidly retrieve EDL-critical data." Without the MarCO CubeSats, InSight would relay the flight information to Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which does not transmit information as quickly. Seeing the already-present difficulty in communicating with ground control during especially risky situations, various teams set out to revise the way in which data is relayed back to earth. Original tactics included relying on sending data to nearby orbiters, which would then send data through space and back to earth, or even attempting to send data directly to earth. Because future missions will no longer be able to rely on these methods, a new invention, CubeSats will hopefully greatly improve data relays in real time. The first missions to use such a resource is dubbed Mars Cube One (MarCO), and its primary goal is to reduce the risks prevalent in much older missions, as well as reduce the overall mission cost. The Atlas V Booster will launch the CubeSats which will then separate and fly with their own trajectory to Mars.

Design and Components

The design will contain two communication-relay CubeSats built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory which are 6U (10x20x34cm2) each (1U is 10x10x10).  The EDL information from InSight will travel through an Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) at 8kbps and the CubeSats will then pick up this data using an Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) antenna which is circularly polarized coupled with an X-band frequency which will receive and transmit the information at 8kbps. It will be the size of a softball. It will also contain a deployable solar panel. For the proposed Mars Cube One mission to go smoothly, the data relaying capabilities of CubeSats must vastly out-perform those of resources in the past. As such, the construction of an immense, but simultaneously portable and efficient antenna is crucial. The high-gain antenna proposed is expected to fulfill just this; the HGA will outperform other models in terms of power, low-weight, and storage size.

Similar Launches

There have been several other similar CubeSat missions in the past and others that are currently planned for launch in the near future. For example, NASA’s Lunar Flashlight, which plans to launch in November of 2018. The mission’s goal is to search and map the poles of the moon, analyzing the different water and ice deposits. This would become the first CubeSat to reach lunar orbit, as well as the first to use laser beams to analyze the composition and formation patterns of the possible ice present in the poles of the moon. CubeSat projects, being so inexpensive, are able to gain valuable information and pave the way for future, more expensive projects, to be able to take the necessary precautions for a safe and successful mission. The Lunar Flashlight is looking to map the poles in such a way as to form new data revealing the most cost effective and efficient paths for future CubeSat’s to explore the cavernous lunar poles, taking even more useful measurements and information regarding the ice deposits.

NASA also chose BioSentinel, another CubeSat, as part of the payload to be sent into low earth orbit with the an exploratory mission, scheduled for launch in July 2018. BioSentinel takes advantage of many of the different benefits of CubeSat’s. Being a small and cost effective piece of machinery, it was easily added onto the payload of an already scheduled flight, adding to the value of that particular mission. BioSentinel was filled with an organism used to model the human body and give back data to show the possible responses that the human body could have spending significant periods of time exposed to ambient space radiation.

See also

• Curiosity rover
• Exploration of Mars
• ExoMars - Orbiter/rover
• Mars 3
• Mars Exploration Rover
• Mars Express orbiter
• Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
• Mars Science Laboratory
• Odyssey orbiter