Moving outside of Earth orbit
Starting in 2018, CubeSats began to venture outside of Earth orbit. Here are some of the projects under way, or still being planned:
Mars Cube One (MarCO) — the first CubeSats to leave Earth — launched on May 5, 2018, along with NASA's InSight lander. InSight is expected to land on Mars on Nov. 26, 2018; it is currently en route and the CubeSats are flying just behind it, as they separated independently from the rocket during launch and are running on solar power.
The CubeSats are nicknamed "WALL-E" and "Eve" after the 2008 animated Pixar movie "WALL-E," which follows the adventures of robots in space. When InSight lands, the CubeSats will attempt to send data back to Earth about its descent. This is a test flight and the information will not be critical, as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will do the same job. MarCO's mission will end shortly afterwards.
NASA's first Space Launch System test launch in 2019 will pioneer the rocket expected to bring humans out of low Earth orbit for the first time since the 1960s. The initial, uncrewed launch will include up to 13 microsatellites. Concept ideas include Lunar Flashlight, which reflects sunlight to peer into permanently shadowed craters on the moon, and NEA Scout, which will use a solar sail to fly to near-Earth asteroid 1991VG.
NASA is considering a mission to Jupiter's icy moon Europa in the 2020s or 2030s. In 2014, NASA said it was considering including CubeSats on the mission, which would carry out functions including "reconnaissance for future landing sites, gravity fields, magnetic fields, atmospheric and plume science, and radiation measurements." NASA confirmed the CubeSats would be included in May 2018, and asked the science community for their ideas.
The European Space Agency and NASA previously considered a joint mission to investigate the asteroid 65803 Didymos and try to move its moon via an impactor. The mission wass called Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission. For the European part, they considered including two CubeSats to do supplemental observations. The Europeans elected not to fund their part of the mission in 2016 to give more money to the ExoMars rover mission, but NASA is continuing development on its part. The launch has been delayed into the 2020s.