| Never before has such an itsy-bitsy satellite traveled so far from its home planet. And never before have scientists seen space through its wide-angle camera eyes. This image of Mars was captured Oct. 3 by MarCO-B, one of the twin tiny spacecraft sent to the Red Planet alongside NASA's InSight mission. It is a "CubeSat" — a miniature satellite made at low cost from off-the-shelf materials in an effort to democratize space research. MarCO-B (which engineers nicknamed WALL-E, for the Pixar character) and its twin MarCO-A (called EVE) are no bigger than briefcases and weigh less than 40 pounds. If all goes according to plan, the tiny satellites should arrive in orbit to photograph the InSight lander as it makes its descent to the Martian surface Nov. 26. The interchangeable boxes that constitute each satellite were reportedly inspired by the four-inch plastic cubes used to display Beanie Babies. Usually, CubeSats are launched into low Earth orbit by student researchers, commercial groups and nations with small space programs. They've been equipped with technology from every conceivable discipline for a wide range of scientific research: cameras for environmental sensing, particle detectors for space weather protection, packets of microbes to help researchers understand how life might survive far from Earth. | 
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