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NASA is withdrawing from command of its missions to Mars for the next few weeks.
While the Earth and the red planet are on either side of the sun – in the biennial solar conjunction of Mars – the planets are unable to “see” each other.
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The sun emits hot, ionized gas from its corona that stretches out into space and can obstruct radio signals as well as the controls and communications of engineers with spacecraft.
NASA explained in a Tuesday statement that most missions will stop sending commands to its Mars spacecraft between Saturday and October 16.
A few will extend the moratorium by a day or two, although that decision depends on the angular distance between Mars and the sun in Earth’s sky.
However, the Martian missions will not be completely inactive during this period.
The Perseverance Mars Rover – which landed in February this year – will take weather measurements with its MEDA (Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer) sensors, run its RIMFAX (Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment) radar, capture new sounds with its microphones and will watch for the dust devils with his cameras.
Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is not scheduled to fly but will communicate its status to “Percy” weekly.
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The Curiosity Mars Rover – which has been on Mars since August 2012 – will also perform weather measurements using its REMS (Rover Environmental Monitoring Station) sensors, scan for dust with its cameras, and take radiation measurements with its RAD (Radiation Assessment Detector) and DAN (Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons) sensors.
Finally, NASA’s InSight lander will continue to use its seismometer to detect tremors, and NASA’s three orbiters will all continue to relay some data from surface missions to Earth, as well as collect their own science.
“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 (JPL). declaration. “Each mission was given homework to do until they heard from us again.”
NASA noted that there would be a temporary pause in the raw footage available from Perseverance, Curiosity and InSight.
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After the moratorium, the spacecraft will send the remaining data to NASA’s Deep Space Network: an international network of giant radio antennas managed by JPL.
NASA engineers will spend a week downloading the information before standard spacecraft operations can resume.
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