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NASA has briefly stopped sending instructions to its Mars-exploring robots, however there’s nothing to fret about.
We’re at the moment experiencing a “Mars photo voltaic conjunction,” a two-week stretch through which Earth and the Red Planet are located on reverse sides of the sun. Mars mission groups halt instructions throughout such alignments, which happen roughly each two years, for security causes.
“The missions pause because hot, ionized gas expelled from the sun’s corona could potentially corrupt radio signals sent from Earth to NASA’s Mars spacecraft, leading to unexpected behaviors,” company officers wrote in a conjunction explainer on Friday (Nov. 10). (The corona is the solar’s outer ambiance, which is way hotter than the star’s floor, for causes that scientists nonetheless do not totally perceive.)
Related: Mars: Everything you need to know about the Red Planet
NASA’s Mars fleet, nevertheless, will not be standing down throughout conjunction. During the occasion, which runs from Nov. 10 by Nov. 25, all the robots will proceed doing not less than some work.
For instance, the “Perseverance and Curiosity rovers will monitor adjustments in floor circumstances, climate and radiation as they keep parked,” company officers wrote within the explainer.
“Although momentarily grounded, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter will use its coloration digicam to check the motion of sand, which poses an ever-present problem to Mars missions,” they added.
And NASA’s three energetic Mars orbiters — Odyssey, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and MAVEN (brief for “Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution”) — will nonetheless eye the planet from above. Odyssey and MRO will proceed snapping pictures, and MAVEN will hold finding out how Mars’ atmosphere interacts with photo voltaic particles, NASA officers stated.
Most of those robots are outdated arms at driving out conjunctions. Odyssey arrived at Mars in October 2001, for instance, and MRO bought there in March 2006.
Curiosity has been exploring Mars’ big Gale Crater since August 2012, and MAVEN reached Mars orbit in September 2014. Perseverance and Ingenuity are the relative newcomers within the fleet; the robotic duo landed contained in the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater in February 2021.
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