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As Above So Below
What's going on at Mars?...
Twin satellites dubbed Wall-E and Eve fall silent months after flying over Mars in first-of-its-kind experiment to provide live updates of a NASA lander touching down on the red planet
WALL-E, which had been leaking fuel since liftoff last May, last radioed back on Dec. 29.
It's now more than 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) beyond Mars. EVE went mum on Jan. 4; it's nearly 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) past the red planet.
These were the first CubeSats to venture into deep space, part of an $18.5 million experiment to see whether such compact, cheap devices might serve as radio relays at faraway worlds.
'There's big potential in these small packages,' program manager John Baker of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement.
Twin satellites dubbed Wall-E and Eve fall silent months after flying over Mars in first-of-its-kind experiment to provide live updates of a NASA lander touching down on the red planet
- CubeSats nicknamed Wall-E and Eve launched with the InSight lander last year
- The satellites provided real-time updates to ground controllers as InSight landed
- This week, NASA said it hasn't heard from them for more than a month now
WALL-E, which had been leaking fuel since liftoff last May, last radioed back on Dec. 29.
It's now more than 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) beyond Mars. EVE went mum on Jan. 4; it's nearly 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) past the red planet.
These were the first CubeSats to venture into deep space, part of an $18.5 million experiment to see whether such compact, cheap devices might serve as radio relays at faraway worlds.
'There's big potential in these small packages,' program manager John Baker of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement.
