From today until mid-October, ships and rovers that owns the NASA Mars will be cut off from the earth . This interruption is due to the phenomenon of solar conjunction that occurs every two Earth years when Mars, the Sun and the Earth are fully aligned in this same order mentioned above.
This fact causes interference in the communications that are made, therefore, it is impossible for such a connection to exist because of the iodized gas generated. During this period, NASA does not usually send any commands to the devices that it has installed on the red planet, because it is impossible to predict what data may arrive and what may happen.
This also means that a damaging shipment can lead to incorrect orders and damage to the rovers . Basically, for a little over two weeks, the Mars missions will have to figure out on their own without receiving any kind of order and receiving valuable information . The communication disruption will occur completely between October 2 and October 16, although dates may vary due to certain missions being able to communicate as soon as possible with Earth .
These are the operational artifacts that NASA has on Mars
During that time, the Martian missions will perform the following actions:
The project has been delayed up to eleven times.
NASA and the European Space Agency set the launch date for the James Webb telescope: on December 18 it goes into orbit
The Perseverance rover will capture new sounds with its microphones and take meteorological measurements through the sensors ‘Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer’, others, it will look for dust swirls with its cameras.
The Ingenuity helicopter will remain at its location 175 meters from Perseverance, and will report its status to the rover on a weekly basis.
The Curiosity rover will also take meteorological measurements using the ‘Rover Environmental Monitoring Station’ sensors, measure radiation and search for dust eddies with its array of cameras.
The InSight hover landing method will continue to use its seismometer to detect tremors.
And NASA orbiters Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and MAVEN will continue to transmit mission data to Earth, in addition to collecting their own science.
Engineers will spend about a week downloading the information before normal spacecraft operations resume. If the teams monitoring these missions determine that certain collected scientific data has been corrupted, it could be retransmitted.
