CNN Indonesia
Thursday, 23 Nov 2023 10:51 WIB
Illustration. NASA has temporarily suspended all missions to the planet Mars until November 25 2023. (Photo: Screenshot of esa.int web)
Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
United States Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) pauses the entire mission in Planet Mars. Check out the reasons.
This temporary cessation of missions to Mars cannot be separated from the phenomenon of solar conjunction, which is the movement of Mars to the opposite side of the Sun to Earth.
When the phenomenon occurs, Mars will be separated from the Sun by less than one degree as it approaches the star. Both objects will be in the constellation Libra.
After that, the Red Planet will not be observable for several weeks because it will be swept away by the Sun’s light. During a solar conjunction, an event that Earth and Mars experience every two Earth years, the two planets will also be at their furthest apart.
Mars and Earth are usually separated by an average distance of about 140 million miles (225 million kilometers). During a solar conjunction, Earth and Mars will be about 235 million miles apart, more than two and a half times the average distance between our planet and the Sun.
Mars’ solar conjunction is not only important for skywatchers. For more than twenty years NASA has operated robots such as the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on the surface of Mars as well as flying the Ingenuity helicopter across barren and arid landscapes and of course spacecraft in orbit around the Red Planet.
During the Sun conjunction, mission controllers on Earth lost contact with the robotic Mars mission. The rover ground to a halt, Ingenuity was grounded, and the spacecraft sent no data back to Earth.
This is done to prevent the possibility of entering partial commands that interfere with the operation of the robot or spacecraft.
“NASA will delay sending commands to the Mars fleet for two weeks, from November 11 to 25 when Earth and the Red Planet are on opposite sides of the Sun. This phenomenon is called the Martian solar conjunction, which occurs once every two years,” NASA said in a statement .
“This mission was terminated because hot ionized gas emitted from the solar corona could potentially distort radio signals sent from Earth to NASA spacecraft on Mars, causing unpredictable behavior.” he added.
Signals to Mars stopped on Saturday, November 11 and will resume on November 25. It’s not a holiday for the Mars mission, which will continue to collect data about Martian surface conditions, weather and the movement of sand across the Martian surface.
“Our mission team has spent months preparing to-do lists for all of our Mars spacecraft. We will still be able to hear from them and check on their health conditions over the next few weeks.” Mars Relay Network manager Roy Gladden said in a statement.
Over the next few months Mars will emerge from the broad side of the Sun and will be visible for much longer in the pre-dawn sky.
In about a year, Mars will reach opposition, at which time Mars will be visible most of the night above Earth.
(rfi/dmi)
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2023-11-23 03:51:30
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