NASA has stopped sending commands to its fleet of robotic probes on or orbiting the red planet because the Sun is in between Earth and Mars.
From the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers to the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and more, NASA has a veritable army of robots on the red planet or orbiting. But the space agency on Thursday announced that it will stop sending commands to any of those probes until Saturday, November 25, because of the positions of Mars, the Earth, and the Sun.
Between November 11 and November 25, the Sun will be in between Earth and Mars. The phenomenon is called Mars solar conjunction and it happens once every two years. The space agency is pausing communication because Sun expels hot, ionised gas from its corona and there is a chance that could corrupt radio signals sent from Earth to Mars. This could cause unexpected behaviour from the spacecraft on Mars.
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Of course, this does not mean that the robotic missions are off-duty. The Perseverance and Curiosity rovers will continue to monitor changes in surface conditions, weather and radiation even though they won’t be moving. The Ingenuity helicopter may be grounded but it will use its colour camera to study the movement of sand. The Mars Reconnaissance and Odyssey orbiters will continue to image the planet’s surface while in orbit.
Also, while NASA won’t be sending commands to the spacecraft, it will continue receiving health updates from all of them throughout the conjunction apart from two days. There will be two days when the space agency will not get updates from the spacecraft because Mars will be completely behind the disk of the Sun.
But once the communications pause ends, all the pending science data collected by the missions will be relayed back to the planet where scientists can continue studying it.
© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
First published on: 14-11-2023 at 12:46 IST
