NASA's Martian robots to not work for 2 weeks as Sun blocks Red Planet

The Mars exploring robots, or NASA's exploration robots, that are deployed on the red planet, will be on vacation for two weeks after being the planet changed its position. This is the phenomenon when the Earth and Mars cannot “see” each other as The Sun comes between the two. NASA revealed that the agency will stop sending signals to the Martian fleet to avoid any mishap due to the enhanced solar radiation. 

What is the Mars Solar Conjunction?

NASA explained that this phenomenon occurs when the Sun separates Earth and Mars from each other making them look like “dancers on either side of a huge bonfire.” What occurs after every two years, this phenomenon lasts for two weeks and hinders the communication between engineers on Earth and the fleet on Mars. As per NASA, communications between the two planets must be halted during the event because if hot, ionized gas expelled from the Sun’s corona can corrupt commands which could result in equipment malfunction. 

What will NASA do all that while?

According to the agency’s statement, Mars-oriented operations will become relatively inactive from the Earth’s side from October 2-16. NASA has sent a list of simple commands to the operational fleet that they will be carrying out for the said time. Currently, the Martian fleet includes- the Perseverance rover, Ingenuity helicopter, the Curiosity rover, InSight lander and three orbiters – Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and MAVEN.

What are the commands?

While waiting for the conjunction to end, the Perseverance rover will take weather measurements and use its cameras and microphones to discover “dust devils” and new sounds respectively. The Ingenuity helicopter on the other hand will communicate its weekly status to the rover 175 meters away from Perseverance. 

Besides, the Curiosity rover will record weather and radiation measurements while its cameras will also look for information in the dust. Meanwhile, the Insight lander will do what it has done till now which is detecting Marsquakes using its seismometer whereas the three orbiters will continue relaying data from the Martian surface to Earth. 

NASA informed that transmission of raw images during this time will also stop from Perseverance, Curiosity and Insight. It further said that before the operations resume, engineers will download the images beamed back to Earth at NASA’s Deep Space Network.

(Image: Twitter/@NASAJPL)