Nasa’s first spacecraft silent

Washington: Nasa has lost touch with the first minispacecraft that ventured into deep space, according to the US space agency which said that it is unlikely the twin CubeSats will be heard from again. The MarCO CubeSats were launched last year to test if such low-cost technology can operate in deep space. The twins, nicknamed EVE and WALL-E after characters from a Pixar film, served as communications relays during the InSight’s Mars landing, beaming back data at each stage of its descent into the Martian surface in near-real time, along with InSight’s first image.