Tiny space probes are set to make a giant leap away from Earth's neighborhood.
Small and economical "cubesats" already eye our planet from orbit. But such bantam craft are about to start pushing out into deep space, helping researchers study
and explore the moon, asteroids and other distant bodies.
Cubesats are an exciting new tool that "will enable some new kinds of measurements to be made and, in some cases, whole new missions to be done," said Robert Staehle, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, who led a 2013 study investigating the feasibility and potential of interplanetary cubesats. [Cubesats: Tiny, Versatile Spacecraft Explained (Infographic)]
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