NASA halts Mars comms for two weeks as Sun gets in way of Red Planet
(2021/09/29)
- Reference: 1632900671
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/09/29/nasa_mars_conjunction/
- Source link:
Martian spacecraft will get a temporary break from their normal work schedules when NASA pauses sending any commands from mission control during the upcoming Mars solar conjunction.
Every two years, Mars and Earth find themselves on opposite sides of the Sun, completely invisible to each other because a glowing star spewing plumes of hot, ionized gas happens to be in the way. There’s no point trying to coordinate complex science operations during this stage, so NASA isn’t going to be uploading new commands to its numerous Martian rovers, landers, or orbiters from about October 2 until October 16.
For example, the Perseverance, Curiosity, and InSight vehicles won’t be sending any raw images from their cameras back to Earth during the communications downtime. The Ingenuity drone will stop flying and rest on the ground 575 feet (175 metres) away from its handler Perseverance, although it will still send weekly status reports to the trundlebot that can be relayed back to Earth later.
[1]
“Though our Mars missions won’t be as active these next few weeks, they’ll still let us know their state of health,” [2]said Roy Gladden, manager of the Mars Relay Network at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory this week. “Each mission has been given some homework to do until they hear from us again.”
[3]
Curiosity and Perseverance have been instructed to track weather conditions on Mars. Their sensors are to record signs of so-called “dust devils” – sweeping whirlwinds of Martian regolith kicked up by the planet’s winds.
Perseverance will also be listening to the phenomena with its microphones. The three orbiters – Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and MAVEN – will transmit less data back to Earth and continue monitoring the Red Planet’s surface from afar where possible.
[4]NASA hopes VIPER rover will search for water in Moon's Nobile crater in 2023
[5]Boffins say Martian colonists could pee in buckets, give blood if they want shelter
[6]NASA's Perseverance rover nabs two Martian rock samples for scientists on Earth to study one day
[7]China's Mars rover assigned extended mission after exceeding life expectancy
Although work may seem a little more quiet for NASA engineers and scientists, they won’t get to sit back and relax for long. As soon as Earth gets a better line-of-sight to Mars as the conjunction passes, they’ll be bombarded with all the data the spacecraft stored and beamed to the Deep Space Network – an array of radio antennas on terra firma managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Staff will have to spend a week downloading and wading through the whole stream of information before normal spacecraft operations can be restarted. Any data corrupted during the conjunction will also have to be resent to Earth. ®
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YVQ5XyaTL50Wq@dkxZqJNQAAAFc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://mars.nasa.gov/news/9051/nasas-mars-fleet-lays-low-as-sun-moves-between-earth-and-red-planet/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YVQ5XyaTL50Wq@dkxZqJNQAAAFc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/21/nasas_viper_rover_to_search/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/14/martian_blood_brick_plan/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/14/mars_perseverance_rover_rocks_nasa/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/23/zhurong_extended_mission/
[8] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Every two years, Mars and Earth find themselves on opposite sides of the Sun, completely invisible to each other because a glowing star spewing plumes of hot, ionized gas happens to be in the way. There’s no point trying to coordinate complex science operations during this stage, so NASA isn’t going to be uploading new commands to its numerous Martian rovers, landers, or orbiters from about October 2 until October 16.
For example, the Perseverance, Curiosity, and InSight vehicles won’t be sending any raw images from their cameras back to Earth during the communications downtime. The Ingenuity drone will stop flying and rest on the ground 575 feet (175 metres) away from its handler Perseverance, although it will still send weekly status reports to the trundlebot that can be relayed back to Earth later.
[1]
“Though our Mars missions won’t be as active these next few weeks, they’ll still let us know their state of health,” [2]said Roy Gladden, manager of the Mars Relay Network at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory this week. “Each mission has been given some homework to do until they hear from us again.”
[3]
Curiosity and Perseverance have been instructed to track weather conditions on Mars. Their sensors are to record signs of so-called “dust devils” – sweeping whirlwinds of Martian regolith kicked up by the planet’s winds.
Perseverance will also be listening to the phenomena with its microphones. The three orbiters – Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and MAVEN – will transmit less data back to Earth and continue monitoring the Red Planet’s surface from afar where possible.
[4]NASA hopes VIPER rover will search for water in Moon's Nobile crater in 2023
[5]Boffins say Martian colonists could pee in buckets, give blood if they want shelter
[6]NASA's Perseverance rover nabs two Martian rock samples for scientists on Earth to study one day
[7]China's Mars rover assigned extended mission after exceeding life expectancy
Although work may seem a little more quiet for NASA engineers and scientists, they won’t get to sit back and relax for long. As soon as Earth gets a better line-of-sight to Mars as the conjunction passes, they’ll be bombarded with all the data the spacecraft stored and beamed to the Deep Space Network – an array of radio antennas on terra firma managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Staff will have to spend a week downloading and wading through the whole stream of information before normal spacecraft operations can be restarted. Any data corrupted during the conjunction will also have to be resent to Earth. ®
Get our [8]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YVQ5XyaTL50Wq@dkxZqJNQAAAFc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://mars.nasa.gov/news/9051/nasas-mars-fleet-lays-low-as-sun-moves-between-earth-and-red-planet/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YVQ5XyaTL50Wq@dkxZqJNQAAAFc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/21/nasas_viper_rover_to_search/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/14/martian_blood_brick_plan/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/14/mars_perseverance_rover_rocks_nasa/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/23/zhurong_extended_mission/
[8] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Comms relays?
AdamT
Presumably, at some point (i.e. if there is a permanent/semi-permanent human presence on Mars) we will need communication relays to avoid this?
I guess they could go at the Lagrange 4+5 (trojan) points of either Mars orbit or Earth orbit. Or both?
I wonder if anyone is planning this yet?
Re: Comms relays?
werdsmith
Can't they just use WhatsApp?
Re: Comms relays?
Julz
Or a sun centric orbit not on the plain of the ecliptic.
Re: Comms relays?
Annihilator
If there's a permanent presence, I'm sure they'd be self-sufficient enough that a 2-week comms gap wouldn't be an issued - it's not like real-time conversational comms will ever be possible at any time of the orbit sync anyway.
Suspect a relay would eventually be built, but I doubt it's high on anyone's agenda.
Some folk you can help, whilst other seem to prefer to remain in the Dark Ages
That was an entertaining read, Katyanna, with a block on Martian communications mirrored elsewhere too, although in one certain case it may be attributable to the most basic of messaging boards which automatically mindlessly rejects any additional enlightening and directing formatting/rich hypertextualisation rather than relying on any human intervention/interaction with information which might be subject to vetting/peer moderation.
I refer to the following communication to a team which was rejected by a National Defense Magazine and has one thinking .... Oops, the machine appears to not like all of that .... [Sorry, an error has occurred on the page you are trying to access.] ..... and post to to provide Vital Missing Intelligence and Generally Available Information for Presentation.
Forwarded Mail ...... and something which should really be widely shared from this magazine, for National Defense.
amanfromMars 1 Tue 28 Sep 12:03 [2109281203] …… saying a lot more on [1]https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2021/09/27/cloud_skills_opinion/#c_4338947
What’s not to like and love if one knows what needs to be done
With further specific regard to the Dark Mattering discussed in Tiered IntelAIgent Strata for Total Information Awareness Fanatics, the embarrassment of riches available for mining and advanced processing for future AWEsome capabilities and abilities is not without its inherent difficulties whenever it is realised everything one may want can be provided and made readily available.
Something which the US military [in the public sector] and/or Amazon Web Services [in the private sector], which one is best assuming are not wondering and pondering alone in their thinking about such as be novel fields of endeavour, clearly bravely admits to ……
Shayn Hawthorne, space technology lead at Amazon Web Services, said there are many applications for artificial intelligence and machine learning in space that have yet to be conceived.
“We all know we want to do AI/ML on orbit,” he said. “We know that we want to connect to everything, but we’re not sure of all of the different missions that we want to use it for yet.”
Engineers are not limited by technology but rather by concepts of operations, he said. …. [2]Algorithmic Warfare: AI Key to Unlocking New Space Applications
Whatever to do next for the best of all can even tend to be problematical should one have any doubts or regrets about the supply of greater facility to A.N.Others.
‘Tis the Field of Angelic Play with Daemons then.
Many could learn a great deal more than they ever imagined possible just by simply following The Register example of the genre.
[1] https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2021/09/27/cloud_skills_opinion/#c_4338947
[2] https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2021/9/27/ai-key-to-unlocking-new-space-applications