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Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: Sun in the Way Will Affect Mars Missions in April - 0 views

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...index.cfm

scibyte87 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 26 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • The positions of the planets next month will mean diminished communications between Earth and NASA's spacecraft at Mars
  • Mars will be passing almost directly behind the sun, from Earth's perspective. The sun can easily disrupt radio transmissions between the two planets during that near-alignment
  • To prevent an impaired command from reaching an orbiter or rover, mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are preparing to suspend sending any commands to spacecraft at Mars for weeks in April
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • NASA's Mars Odyssey
  • sixth conjunction for
  • The travels of Earth and Mars around the sun set up this arrangement, called a Mars solar conjunction, about once every 26 months
  • which has been orbiting Mars since 2001
  • are not identical to each other. They can differ in exactly how close to directly behind the sun Mars gets, and they can differ in how active the sun is
  • The Mars solar conjunctions
  • Both orbiters will continue science observations on a reduced basis compared to usual operations. Both will receive and record data from the rovers.
  • Odyssey will continue transmissions Earthward throughout April, although engineers anticipate some data dropouts, and the recorded data will be retransmitted later
  • The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will go into a record-only mode on April 4.
  • anticipates that the orbiter could have about 40 gigabits of data from its own science instruments and about 12 gigabits of data from Curiosity accumulated for sending to Earth around May 1.
  • Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is approaching its fifth solar conjunction. Its team will send no commands between April 9 and April 26. The rover will continue science activities using a long-term set of commands to be sent beforehand.
  • Curiosity
  • can also continue making science observations from the location where it will spend the conjunction period. Curiosity's controllers plan to suspend commanding from April 4 to May 1.
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