The solar event will interrupt communication with the Martian missions for 2 weeks

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The solar conjunction of Mars takes place between October 2 and 16, and this recording time between Earth and Mars occurs for a few weeks every two years, when the two planets are on either side of the Sun.

NASA teams that run missions to Mars are stopping sending commands to orbiters and rovers on the Martian surface until mid-October, but that doesn’t mean all exploration on the Red Planet will stop.

“Although our missions to Mars are not as active in the next few weeks, they will still let us know their state of health,” said Roy Gladden, head of the Mars Relay Network at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. , in a statement. “Each mission was given homework to do until they heard from us again.”

The sun is like a giant communications barrier, spewing hot, energized gas from its outer atmosphere through space. When Mars and Earth are on either side of the Sun, this solar gas can interfere with the radio signals NASA uses to communicate with its robotic Martian explorers.

If engineers attempt to send commands to one of the Martian spaceships during this time, the messages can get mixed up – and that bet is not worth the risk of rovers or orbiters receiving corrupted communications that could put them in. danger.

Instead, the robots are given simple command lists before the solar event that will keep them busy. This way, they can navigate on autopilot without having to wait for further instructions during the communication failure. But don’t expect the rovers to go on a ride or the Ingenuity helicopter to soar into the Martian skies.

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The two rovers, Perseverance and Curiosity, have found comfortable parking spaces. The Ingenuity helicopter is 575 feet (175 meters) from Perseverance and will send weekly updates on its behavior to the rover. The two can keep company on Mars since they won’t be talking to their teams on Earth.

Perseverance will use its MEDA, or Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer, instrument to keep an eye on Martian weather, operate its RIMFAX radar instrument, listen to sounds with its microphones, and use its cameras to search for dust demons. However, the rover won’t even move its mast – which is like turning its head – to do any of these things. Curiosity has a similar set of homework, using slightly different instruments.

This illustration shows NASA's active Martian missions (clockwise from top left): Perseverance rover and Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, InSight lander, Odyssey orbiter, MAVEN orbiter, Curiosity rover and Reconnaissance orbiter March.

The InSight lander, already stationary by nature, will use its seismometer to detect earthquakes. NASA’s three orbiters on Mars, including Odyssey, MAVEN and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, will continue to collect observations of the planet from above while collecting data from surface missions that can then be sent back to Earth.

The agency expects a small amount of data to return to Earth during the solar conjunction, but the distribution of most of the data will be saved until the event ends. So if you like to watch the constant stream of raw images coming from the rovers or InSight every week, you’ll have to wait until the sun isn’t hanging out between Earth and Mars.

Perseverance took a selfie on September 10 with the "Rochette" rock it sampled.

Teams will analyze information returned from the Martian spacecraft to Earth using NASA’s Deep Space radio antenna array before missions resume normal operations after the event. This ensures that if any data has been corrupted, it can be returned.

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“We have already sent Perseverance a set of commands so that it can perform science activities without having to ‘walk in the loop’, which means that they pose no risk to the safety of the rover, and the team won’t need to verify that they’re successful every day, ”wrote Melissa Rice, associate professor of planetary science at Western Washington University and long-term planner for the rover’s science team, in an update. .

“The solar conjunction is also an opportunity for us (to) take a step back and reflect. In our day-to-day operations, it’s easy to get immersed in the technical details of the mission and lose sight of the depth of how a robot operates on an alien world. “

Perseverance is currently in the southern Seítah region of Jezero Crater, where she will likely make her next attempt to collect samples after the conjunction.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took this photo of Perseverance, visible as a white dot, in the Séítah area south of the Jezero crater.

The conjunction will give the Ingenuity helicopter a much needed break. What started as a tech demonstration has turned into an aerial workhorse, making 13 flights since April – when it was only designed to fly five times.

The Ingenuity team is trying to prepare the helicopter to fly with a higher rotor speed as the seasons change on Mars, causing the atmospheric density to decrease. The small helicopter successfully completed a high-speed spin test on September 15, but the helicopter aborted its attempted test flight on September 18.

The Ingenuity helicopter took this image on its 13th flight on September 4.
The team is still trying to figure out why this happened, but it could be due to wear and tear on Ingenuity’s active flight program since April.
“We have a number of tools available to work on the anomaly and we are optimistic that we will overcome it and resume flight soon,” wrote Jaakko Karras, deputy operations manager of Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at JPL, in an update.

The team will check out Ingenuity after the conjunction to begin planning for its 14th flight and see how the helicopter handled two weeks of downtime.

In the meantime, we wish mission teams on Earth rest and fun, an unsupervised but responsible vacation on Mars for the robots.

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