I hope you’re ready to log some serious miles on this road trip, because Speaking
of Chemistry is blasting off for a close encounter with some soon-to-be martian technology.
We’re boldly going to Pasadena to learn why NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab is getting
ready to send cubesats--satellites the size of a briefcase--to Mars.
Meet Mars Cube One, or MarCO for short.
This one here is a model, but the one behind the glass there, that beauty and its identical
twin are tagging along with NASA’s 2018 InSight mission to probe the geoscience of Mars.
The satellites themselves won’t be doing any science on Mars, but these pioneering
cubesats will be the first to travel from Earth to a different planet, potentially opening
the door to higher-risk, interplanetary science missions with smaller price tags.
Let me explain.
Cubesats are tiny, boxy satellites that can be as small as this little cutie.
And cubesats fly in the face of what most people think of when we think about NASA: huge, expensive
spacecraft hurtling through the solar system to expand our knowledge of the cosmos.
Take the Juno spacecraft that just locked into orbit around Jupiter.
It’s classic NASA.
This 1.1 billion dollar mission includes a probe that’s taller than the tallest dudes
in basketball’s history and it’s more than three metric tons.
But that’s what it takes to carry nine scientific instruments and fly them around Jupiter to
study things like the chemical makeup of the gas giant’s atmosphere and auroras.
Oh, and one of the instruments is called JEDI.
For real.
Remember that MarCO’s the size of a briefcase and its mass is in the neighborhood of 10
kilograms, instead of multiple metric tons. And the project’s cost, that's about 10 million
dollars, instead of in the billions.
The tradeoff is that MarCO can’t hold nine scientific instruments.
Cubesats are designed for very focused, specific jobs and, thus, they hold like one or two instruments,
which will soon include miniaturized mass spectrometers for analyzing atmospheric samples.
In the future, NASA could potentially send swarms of cubesats into space to do a number
of specific tasks for less than a typical satellite mission.
Now, cubesats won’t replace NASA’s big satellites.
It’s like how people haven’t kicked their iMacs to the curb just because they have iPhones
now, too.
Both platforms are useful with their own pros and cons.
But you’re probably wondering what MarCO’s job is.
Here’s Andy Klesh, JPL’s Chief Engineer for Interplanetary Small Spacecraft.
Andy: Two of these guys are going to launch with the InSight mission to Mars.
Launch with Insight, fly independently to Mars over six and a half months and get there
on just the right second on just the right day to relay information back from the InSight lander.
Matt: You might be wondering how these adorable little satellites are going to make it to Mars.
With adorable little thrusters.
Both MarCO satellites have special miniature thrusters fire a hydrofluorocarbon refrigerant
that goes by the name R236FA, which is also used in some fire extinguishers back here on Earth.
But back to MarCO’s mission, which is to beam data back from InSight as it lands on Mars.
Andy : The data that MarCO is beaming back is actually the engineering data from
InSight as it travels to the surface.
We call it the seven minutes of terror.
During this time, we’re going through atmosphere, there’s a plasma sheath that’s actually
erupting around the InSight spacecraft on there. You really have much of a loss of communications
along the way.
Absolutely terrifying as an engineer.
Matt: MarCO will help engineers like Andy better understand what happens during those
lapses in communications to help reduce that terror when large, long-term missions like InSight land.
Once InSight's on the ground, though, the MarCOs are done. Like done done, because they're not coming home.
But if MarCO succeeds, NASA will know that cubesats can embark on interplanetary,
high-risk missions without a huge price tag.
Andy: Some of the things we’re excited about is where you can take more risk along
the way.
We’ve discovered that there are plumes on Enceladus and Europa.
Can we actually send a cubesat down into the plumes and determine what is the composition of these
things over there.
Or there’s Io which has volcanoes on it--go down to see the volcanoes of Io.
Go down to the surface of Venus.
It’s the probes to go and explore these unknown places that you wouldn’t want
to spend a lot of money to go and check out.
But if you can take that risk and just see what is there, what you don’t know, that’s
what we want to do.
Matt: Dang.
For more information on chemistry and cubesats, check out the description below.
And be sure to tune in for our next stop on the road trip, UCLA, where we caught up with
the bioactives builder himself, the one, the only Hosea Nelson.