The missions will continue collecting data about the Mars , though engineers back on Earth will stop sending commands to them until mid-October NASA will stand down from commanding its Mars missions for subsequent few weeks while Earth and therefore the Mars are on opposite sides of the Sun. this era , called Mars solar conjunction, happens every two years.
The Sun expels hot, ionized gas from its corona, which extends far into space. During solar conjunction, when Earth and Mars can’t “see” one another , this gas can interfere with radio signals if engineers attempt to communicate with spacecraft at Mars. that would corrupt commands and end in unexpected behavior from our region explorers.
To be safe, NASA engineers send Mars spacecraft an inventory of straightforward commands to hold out for a couple of weeks. This year, most missions will stop sending commands between Oct. 2 and Oct. 16. a couple of extend that commanding moratorium, as it’s called, each day or two in either direction, counting on the angle between Mars and therefore the Sun in Earth’s sky.
“Though our Mars missions won’t be as active these next few weeks, they’ll still allow us to know their state of health,” said Roy Gladden, manager of the Mars Relay Network at NASA’s reaction propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Each mission has been given some homework to try to to until they hear from us again.”
Here’s how a number of those Mars missions are going to be spending that point
- Perseverance will take weather measurements with its MEDA (short for Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer) sensors, look for dust devils with its cameras (though it won’t move its mast, or “head”), run its RIMFAX(Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment) radar, and capture new sounds with its microphones.
- The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter will remain stationary at its loction75 feet (175 meters) away from Perseverance and communicate its status weekly to the rover.
- The Curiosity rover will take weather measurements using its rems (Rover Environmental Monitoring Station) sensors, take radiation measurements with its rad(Radiation Assessment Detector) and dna (Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons) sensors, and look for dust devils with its suite of cameras.
- The stationary InSight lander will continue using its to detect temblors likeit captured recently.
- NASA’s three orbiters – Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and MAVEN – will all continue relaying some data from the agency’s surface missions back to Earth, in addition to gathering their own science.
While a limited amount of science data will reach Earth during conjunction, the spacecraft will save most of it until after the moratorium. (That means there’ll be a short lived pause within the stream of raw images available from Perseverance, Curiosity, and InSight.)
Then, they’ll beam their remaining data to NASA’s region Network, a system of massive Earth-based radio antennas managed by JPL. Engineers will spend a few week downloading the knowledge before normal spacecraft operations resume. If the teams monitoring these missions determine any of the collected science data has been corrupted, they will usually have that data retransmitted.