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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has decided to stop sending active commands to its missions in the neighbouring red planet for the next few weeks as the Mars solar conjunction period remains in effect. In an official statement issued by the American space agency on Tuesday, NASA explained that during the Mars solar conjunction period, Earth and the Red Planet will be on opposite sides of the Sun. This position of the two planets will affect any communication attempt made by NASA to connect with its Mars missions as Sun radiates hot, ionized gas from its corona, which extends far into space. These gases can interfere with radio signals if engineers try to communicate with spacecraft at Mars. The Sun’s radiation that will stand in the middle of the two planets could “corrupt commands” and can also result in unexpected behaviour from NASA’s deep space explorers. Hence, the commanding moratorium, as NASA calls it, will remain in effect during this period.
However, work will not completely halt on Mars, as engineers have already sent a list of simple commands to spacecrafts in Mars to carry out for a few weeks. Most missions on the red planet will stop sending commands between October 2 and October 16 and that period can extend a day or two in either direction, depending on the angular distance between Mars and the Sun in Earth’s sky mentioned NASA.
Currently, NASA has its Perseverance rover, Ingenuity helicopter, Curiosity Rover, stationary InSight lander stationed on the Red Planet besides the three orbiters. During the Mars solar conjunction period, all these missions will be working on different commands that have been sent to them beforehand by engineers on Earth.
The Perseverance rover will take weather measurements with its Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) sensors, and look for dust devils with its cameras, run its RIMFAX (Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment) radar, and capture new sounds with its microphones; while the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter will remain stationary at its location 175 meters away from Perseverance and communicate its status weekly to the rover.
The Curiosity rover will also take weather measurements using its Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) sensors, take radiation measurements with its RAD (Radiation Assessment Detector) and DAN (Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons) sensors, and look for dust devils with its myriad set of cameras. Meanwhile, the InSight lander, which will remain stationary, will continue using its seismometer to detect temblors. The three orbiters: Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and MAVEN – will continue sending some data from the agency’s surface missions back to Earth, in addition to gathering their own information.
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