MARS SOLAR CONJUNCTION

 

For: Preliminary & Mains

Topics covered:

• What is Mars Solar Conjunction?
• When is this taking place?
• What happens when solar conjunction ends?
• What happens to the spacecraft?

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News Flash

The daily chatter between antennas here on Earth and those on NASA spacecraft at Mars is about to get much quieter for a few weeks because of Mars solar conjunction.

 

Mars Solar Conjunction

Mars Solar Conjunction is a period when Mars and Earth will be on opposite sides of the Sun. The Sun expels hot, ionized gas from its corona, which extends far into space.

During solar conjunction, this gas can interfere with radio signals when engineers try to communicate with spacecraft at Mars, corrupting commands and resulting in unexpected behavior from our deep space explorers.

 

When is this taking place?

Solar conjunction occurs every two years. This time, the hold on issuing commands — called a “command moratorium” — will run from Aug. 28 to Sept. 7, 2019. Some missions will have stopped commanding their spacecraft earlier in preparation for the moratorium.

 

What happens to the spacecraft?

• Some instruments aboard spacecraft such as cameras that generate large amounts of data will be inactive.
• On the surface of Mars, the Curiosity rover will stop driving, while the InSight lander won’t move its robotic arm.
• Only Odyssey will attempt to relay that data to Earth before conjunction ends.
• Another orbiter, MAVEN, will continue to collect its own science data but won’t support any relay operations during this time.
• There will be a temporary pause in the stream of raw images available from Curiosity, InSight and the other Mars missions.

 

What happens when solar conjunction ends?

Once the conjunction is over, the spacecraft will beam the data they’ve collected.

 

Source: NASA

 

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