MarCO

MarCO
MarCO
MarCO
MarCO
MarCO
MarCO
MarCO
MarCO
MarCO
MarCO
MarCO
Spacecraft name MarCO
Form factor CubeSat
Units or mass 6U
Organisation NASA
Institution Space agency
Entity Government (Civil / Military)
Headquarters US
Launch brokerer Tyvak
Costs $18,500,000 for two spacecraft and all project costs
Oneliner

First interplanetary CubeSat and relay data during Insight landing on Mars.

Description

Serve as a relay satellite to send data back to Earth during InSight's entry, descent and landing operations at Mars MarCO is a technology capability demonstration of communications relay system.

Results

MarCO-A Radio Occultation did not detect the Mars atmosphere or ionosphere during the flyby. An assessment of the MarCO flyby and RO data indicates that the MarCO 2-way data has a stable frequency residual and performance is in the same order of MRO 2-way data. Modeling results suggest that the 2-way MarCO radio signal could have been able to have a positive detection of the atmosphere and ionosphere comparable to MRO. Frequency residual measurements derived from MarCO X-band radio links confirm that the 1-way X-band data could have detected the neutral atmosphere but not the ionosphere.

Sources [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Photo sources [1] [2] [3]
COTS subsystems
  • ADCS - Blue Canyon XACT
  • SOLAR PANELS - MMA Design HaWK
  • THRUSTER - VACCO
Subsystems sources [1] [2]
COTS compoments
  • Battery cells - Panasonic NCR 18650B
Components sources [1]
Keywords Reflectarray, Beyond Earth orbit, Propulsion, Steerable Solar Arrays
Space photos MarCOMarCO

[1]

Related Spacecraft

Spacecraft Status Rocket Date Orbit
MarCO 1 (Mars Cube One, WALL-E, MarCO-A) Was operational until 2018-12-29 (Public news) Atlas V 2018-05-05 Mars flyby
MarCO 2 (Mars Cube One, EVE, MarCO-B) Was operational until 2019-01-04 (Public news) Atlas V 2018-05-05 Mars flyby

Last modified: 2023-06-03

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Created by Erik Kulu

Email: erik.kulu@nanosats.eu
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/erikkulu

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