Mars Cube One

Template:Infobox spaceflight

Mars Cube One (or MarCO) is a Mars flyby mission consisting of two nanospacecraft, 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.^[1] Mars Cube One is expected to be the first spacecraft built to the CubeSat form to operate beyond Earth orbit.

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,^[2] but the mission was postponed to 2018 after a major test failure of an InSight instrument.

Objectives[]

PIA19388-Mars-InSight-MarCO-CubeSats-20150612 — MarCO A and B monitoring *InSight* landing (artist concept)

The two "MarCO" CubeSats (A and B), are identical.^[3] They measure Template loop detected: Template:Convert/x^[4] (about 10.5x the volume of a 10x10x10 cm 1U cubesat) with one of them serving as backup. They will fly by Mars during the landing phase and relay InSight's telemetry in real time.^[1]^[5] MarCO is a technology capability demonstration of communications relay system.

Communications system[]

MarCO has a small UHF antenna and a large flat-panel X band antenna. They are capable of an 8 kbit/s UHF link from InSight to MarCO, and 8 kbit/s X-band link from MarCO to DSN dishes on Earth.^[1]