CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - NASA's next Mars explorer is going to have company all the way to the red planet: a couple of puny yet groundbreaking sidekicks.
Named after the characters in the 2008 animated movie, the small satellites WALL-E and EVE hitched a ride on the Atlas V rocket that launched early Saturday from California with the Mars InSight lander.
Similar in size to a briefcase or large cereal box, the satellites popped out from the rocket's upper stage after liftoff and are hightailing it to Mars, right behind InSight.
This is the first time little cube-shaped satellites, CubeSats as they're known, have set sail for deep space. The journey will span 6 1/2 months and 300 million miles (485 million kilometers).
A brief look at the $18.5 million experiment tagging along with InSight:
