New decision from NASA for its vehicles on Mars. The space agency will stop sending commands to all spacecraft and rovers on the Martian surface until mid-October. In this way, NASA will cut off communication with its vehicles, as Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of the sun, as it does every two years.
Tools will continue to collect data
Although communication with the spacecraft is cut off, the vehicles that continue their mission on the Red Planet will continue to collect data. During the event known as a solar conjunction, it is predicted that ionized gas from the sun can interfere with radio signals.
Thus, it is thought that iodinated gas may cause unexpected behavior in vehicles by interrupting the commands sent to the spacecraft.
In order to avoid such situations, NASA sent a list of commands to the spacecraft in the next week and cut off communication with its vehicles until the sun conjunction was over.
Many missions to Mars will stop receiving commands between October 2nd and October 16th, called a moratorium of command.
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