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NASA has temporarily stopped sending commands to its Mars-exploring robots, but there's nothing to worry about.
We're currently experiencing a "Mars solar conjunction," a two-week stretch in which Earth and the Red Planet are situated on opposite sides of the sun. Mars mission teams halt commands during such alignments, which occur roughly every two years, for safety reasons.
"The missions pause because hot, ionized gas expelled from the sun's corona could potentially corrupt radio signals sent from Earth to NASA's Mars spacecraft, leading to unexpected behaviors," agency officials wrote in a conjunction explainer on Friday (Nov. 10). (The corona is the sun's outer atmosphere, which is far hotter than the star's surface, for reasons that scientists still don't fully understand.)
NASA's Mars fleet, however, won't be standing down during conjunction. During the event, which runs from Nov. 10 through Nov. 25, all of the robots will continue doing at least some work.
www.space.com
We're currently experiencing a "Mars solar conjunction," a two-week stretch in which Earth and the Red Planet are situated on opposite sides of the sun. Mars mission teams halt commands during such alignments, which occur roughly every two years, for safety reasons.
"The missions pause because hot, ionized gas expelled from the sun's corona could potentially corrupt radio signals sent from Earth to NASA's Mars spacecraft, leading to unexpected behaviors," agency officials wrote in a conjunction explainer on Friday (Nov. 10). (The corona is the sun's outer atmosphere, which is far hotter than the star's surface, for reasons that scientists still don't fully understand.)
NASA's Mars fleet, however, won't be standing down during conjunction. During the event, which runs from Nov. 10 through Nov. 25, all of the robots will continue doing at least some work.
NASA's Mars robots are on their own right now — here's why
To be clear, there's nothing to worry about.
