NASA's Mars Fleet Will Still Conduct Science While Lying Low

Rovers and orbiters will continue collecting limited data during a two-week communications pause due to the position of Earth, the Sun, and the Red Planet. From a report: NASA will hold off sending commands to its Mars fleet for two weeks, from Nov. 11 to 25, while Earth and the Red Planet are on opposite sides of the Sun. Called Mars solar conjunction, this phenomenon happens every two years. 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.

That's not to say those robotic explorers are on holiday. NASA's Perseverance and Curiosity rovers will monitor changes in surface conditions, weather, and radiation as they stay parked. Although momentarily grounded, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter will use its color camera to study the movement of sand, which poses an ever-present challenge to Mars missions. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Odyssey orbiter will continue imaging the surface. And MAVEN will continue collecting data on interactions between the atmosphere and the Sun.

how much storage do they have for offline mode?

[Joe_Dragon]

how much storage do they have for offline mode?

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[Tony Isaac]

640K should be enough, don't you think?

No relay points out at Lagrange 4 or 5?

[MacMann]

I would think it relatively trivial to put something out at the L4 or L5 point to relay communications. I thought I'd look for something on YouTube to help explain and I found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

But now I might be mistaken.

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[MacMann]

L4 or L5 against which body? Earth or Mars?

One, the other, or both, in the end it likely doesn't matter much since it's going to be an expensive mission and the distance needed to cover for the communications relay is going to be much the same if not identical. If we are launching relay stations into Lagrange points we should put one in L4 around Venus for future missions there and a backup for the Mars link.

I don't know which orbit would be more difficult to get to but with L4 and L5 being stable points there's some room for error, but being stabl

Information Theory

[necro81]

Claude Shannon tells us that, no matter how noisy the channel, one can still get some bit rate through.

That said, the heroic measures necessary to properly get reliable two-way communication with the sun in the way just aren't worth it. A two-week pause is quite acceptable by comparison.

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[Cpt_Kirks]

Sounds like they're worried about garbled commands crashing the rover.

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[Baron_Yam]

At the cost of some extra trip time (can't beat the speed of light), you can put a relay at one the stable Earth-Sun Lagrange points to get a comms path around the Sun.

Need Communications network within solar system

[WindBourne]

Ideally, have Starlink or OneWeb create some comm/processing/storage sats that can be put in various lagrange points around the system. Ideally, start with these around the moon and mars, bnut then put them in earth/sun L3/4/5, and then perhaps in Jupiter's/sun L3/4/5 as well. These can be used for deep space comm.

Would they still pause if Mars mission was manned?

[Cito]

Hypothetically of course...

Since this occurs every 2 years, what would happen if we had a manned mission on Mars? Would they still have trouble with video and/or voice communication or has there already been another solution worked out in this situation? Since I've read estimates from different sources like some older trip estimates from NASA to hypotheticals from Popular Science magazine/website that a manned mission to Mars could take up to 2 and a half years in total, with a 6 month travel time to and fr

Re:

[ceoyoyo]

You'd put up a relay satellite if it were a problem. Such a thing is small in comparison the the budget of a manned mission, but large for a robotic one.

Or not. The Apollo missions didn't bother, and the command modules lost contact when they went behind the moon. Any manned Mars mission is going to have to be fairly self sufficient anyway. The round trip delay is about 40 minutes when Mars is at opposition so e-mail is probably the most effective communications. A manned mission would have bigger transmitt

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[MacMann]

Or not. The Apollo missions didn't bother, and the command modules lost contact when they went behind the moon.

Well, they were in something of a hurry to get to the moon, a hurry largely self imposed by people in the USA to prove a point to the rest of the world. Also, losing contact for a few hours with a spacecraft on a know and stable ballistic course through empty space is quite different than losing contact for weeks with a habitat on a hostile planet that has active weather and other hazards.

Any manned Mars mission is going to have to be fairly self sufficient anyway. The round trip delay is about 40 minutes when Mars is at opposition so e-mail is probably the most effective communications. A manned mission would have bigger transmitters, so you could squeeze messages through most of the time.

Well, NASA did imply that communications was at least possible during this period but with high error rates. This make