Why did NASA immediately suspend all Mars missions?

• On November 11, NASA stopped sending commands to Mars spacecraft, and the communications blackout will continue until November 25.

• The reason for this two-week gap is that Mars is currently in solar conjunction, meaning the Sun is currently located directly between Earth and Mars, and radio commands can be disrupted by the Sun’s charged particles.

• Although no new orders have been received, the Mars rovers, satellites and a small helicopter will have a pre-planned list of science targets and will continue sending health checks during the two-week rest period.

For more than a week, NASA has been incommunicado for all of its robotic missions on and in orbit around Mars, but don’t worry, that’s intentional.

About every two years, Earth and Mars go through a short period known as solar conjunction when the two planets are on opposite sides of the sun. According to the Stargazing website in the skyBoth the Sun and Mars will be in the constellation Libra, meaning Mars will be lost in the sun’s glare for weeks, and communication with our robotic friends on the fourth rock will be unclear at best.

On average, Mars is usually about 140 million miles away, but that magnifies during solar conjunction. This distance extends to approximately 235 million miles 2.5 astronomical units (AU) from Earth. This is basically the cosmic opposite of Martian opposition, which occurs when Earth is sandwiched between Mars and the Sun (and the planet of the god of war Look especially Bloodthirsty In the night sky.)

So why do we have to bid farewell to our mechanical brothers for two weeks? Well, the problem is the Sun, which is basically a giant orbit of interference. When spacecraft, orbiters and an impressive helicopter try to send data back to Earth, the information can be disrupted by charged particles from the Sun, which can leave behind gaps in the data. But the opposite is a more disastrous scenario because confused commands sent by NASA could spell doom for the mission. NASA will suspend commands from November 11 to November 25.

The story continues

As NASA explained, this does not mean that these robots will take a long vacation. The Curiosity of Perseverance rovers will continue to observe the surface of Mars, while the Mars Reconnaissance and Odyssey orbiters will continue to operate as usual (although without Calling home of course). Mars’ atmosphere and volatile evolution The MAVEN spacecraft will still study the atmosphere, even… NASA’s pint-sized Ingenuity helicopter It will monitor the movement of Martian sand as it is grounded.

“Our mission teams have spent months preparing mission lists for all of our Mars spacecraft,” said Roy Gladden, director of the Mars Relay Network at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. In a press statement. “We will still be able to listen to them and check on their health over the next few weeks.”

However, even those health checks will remain dark for 48 hours while Mars is directly behind the Sun’s disk. While the various mission controls collectively hold their breath, we hope that familiar signs of mechanical life will return after a couple of days, and humanity’s Martian companions will be eager to share the things they’ve learned while we’re away.

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