NASA Pauses Missions to Mars Due to Solar Conjunction
NASA has temporarily suspended its missions to Mars as Earth and the Red Planet are on opposite sides of the Sun, a phenomenon known as Mars solar conjunction that occurs every two years.
During this time, the sun expels hot ionized gas from its corona, creating interference in radio signals and potentially affecting communication with spacecraft on Mars. To prevent any unexpected behavior of remote deep space explorers, NASA engineers send simple commands to execute over a few weeks. This year, most ships will stop receiving commands between November 12 and 25.
While robotic explorers like Perseverance and Curiosity rovers, as well as the Ingenuity helicopter, will remain active, there will be a communication blackout for two days when the planet is completely behind the Sun’s disk.
Once the communications pause ends, orbiters will transmit all pending scientific data to Earth, and the spacecraft can begin receiving instructions again.
“Our mission teams have spent months preparing task lists for all of our Mars spacecraft,” said Roy Gladden, manager of the Mars Relay Network at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We will still be able to hear from them and check their health status in the coming weeks.”
During this time, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Odyssey space probes, and MAVEN will continue their scientific investigations of the red planet.