Mars will go silent for 14 days in June as spacecraft on the Red Planet will be unable to communicate with Earth for two weeks.
The blackout will begin as Mars appears to slip behind the sun as seen from our home planet. This alignment, known as a Mars solar conjunction, takes place roughly once every 26 months as the two planets dance in their relative orbits around our parent star.
The Maven, Odyssey, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft are currently orbiting above Mars, while NASA also maintains a pair of rovers on the surface - Curiosity and Opportunity. During this two-week period, the space agency will be unable to contact these five vehicles.
From June 7-21, mission planners on Earth will avoid sending commands to spacecraft on and around Mars, since the position of the sun between the two planets could cause interference with the signals or even block them entirely.
During this time, rovers on the ground will be directed to stand still, and robotic arms will not be in operation. Despite these limitations, some of the spacecraft will still be able to perform scientific experiments. Except for Maven, mission planners on other programs have experienced similar blackouts during previous conjunctions.
"Our overall approach is based on what we did for the solar conjunction two years ago, which worked well. It is really helpful to have been through this before," said Nagin Cox from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, head of conjunction planning for the Curiosity rover.
The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (Maven) orbiter arrived at Mars in September 2014. That vehicle will continue studying the solar wind emanating from the sun during the blackout period.
"The data will be stored and transmitted back to us after communications are re-established at the end of the solar conjunction period," James Morrissey, deputy project manager for Maven at the Goddard Space Flight Center, said.
The other two orbiters circling Mars, Odyssey and the MRO, will continue to send data back to Earth, but mission planners believe much of the information will be lost. Odyssey reached Mars in 2001, making this the seventh conjunction for the vehicle.
The two rovers on the surface of the Red Planet will send data up to the orbiters as they collect new information on the alien environment. Program managers will try to send some of the findings back during the blackout, while other data will be stored for transmission back to Earth after regular communication is re-established.
A video explaining the Mars solar conjunction is available on the NASA Web site.
