Mars ‘vanishes’ forcing Nasa to pause all missions on red planet – and ‘invisible’ phenomenon is to blame
MARS will become completely invisible from Earth, forcing Nasa to hit the pause button on its work with the planet.
The Earth and Mars solar conjunction will start on Saturday, November 11, and last until November 25.
“Like dancers on either side of a huge bonfire, the two planets are temporarily invisible to each other.”
“No one attempts to send new instructions to Mars during solar conjunction,” Nasa said in the statement.
“It's impossible to predict what information might be lost due to interference from charged particles from the Sun, and that lost information could potentially endanger the spacecraft.”
During the pause period, Nasa has created “to-do” lists for the spacecraft to work on.
The spacecraft will go into autopilot, but Nasa feels confident in this process as it has become skilled at doing so.
However, Nasa will still check up on the spacecraft during the two-week period.
“We’ll still be able to hear from them and check their states of health over the next few weeks.”