NASA's Mars Fleet Lies Low with Sun Between Earth and Red Planet
NEWS | September 28, 2021
NASA will stand down from commanding its Mars missions for the next few weeks while Earth and the Red Planet are on opposite sides of the Sun. This period, called Mars solar conjunction, happens every two years.
The Sun expels hot, ionized gas from its corona, which extends far into space. During solar conjunction, when Earth and Mars can’t “see” each other, this gas can interfere with radio signals if engineers try to communicate with spacecraft at Mars. That could corrupt commands and result in unexpected behavior from our deep space explorers.
To be safe, NASA engineers send Mars spacecraft a list of simple commands to carry out for a few weeks. This year, most missions will stop sending commands between Oct. 2 and Oct. 16. A few extend that commanding moratorium, as it’s called, a day or two in either direction, depending on the angular distance between Mars and the Sun in Earth’s sky.
https://mars.nasa.gov/news/9051/nasas-mars-fleet-lies-low-with-sun-between-earth-and-red-planet/
