NEW YORK: This month, a conjunction with the sun will cause a two-week communications blackout between NASA and their fleet of Mars spacecraft, which includes both rovers as well as satellites.
During this period of spotty communication in which the alignment of the sun, which will be positioned between the Earth and Mars, interferes with radio communications, the agency plans to pause all communications in order to prevent any garbled messages from being misinterpreted and potentially wreaking havoc on their missions. But this doesn’t mean that the fleet of Mars spacecraft will take a break, as they’ll not only continue to work, they’ll even continue to transmit data. Although, some of the data transmitted is not expected to reach Earth during this period. For which reason, the scientific data acquired during conjunction will remain stored aboard the spacecraft and retransmitted later in June. Both of the agency’s rovers, Curiosity and Opportunity, and their three orbiters, Odyssey, MAVEN and Reconnaissance, are all scheduled to “continue making some science observations during the conjunction period,” however, the rovers won’t be driving or moving their arms, according to NASA news release published Wednesday.
