Mars Solar Conjunction And Its Importance

The daily chitchat between antennas here on Earth and those on NASA spacecraft at Mars is about to get much quieter for a few weeks.
That is because Mars and Earth will be on contradictory sides of the Sun, a period known as Mars solar conjunction. The Sun evacuate hot, ionized gas from its corona, which expand far into space. During solar parallelism, this gas can obstruct with radio signals when engineers try to network with spacecraft at Mars, pernicious commands and resulting in an abrupt behavior from our deep space pioneer.
To be safe, engineers hold off on sending commands when Mars disappears far enough behind the Sun's corona that there's increased risk of radio blocking.
"Our engineers have been acclimating our spacecraft for conjunction for months. They will still be anthologize science data at Mars, and some will attempt to send that data home. But we won't be imperious the spacecraft out of concern that they could act on a depraved command." It is expressed by Roy Gladden, manager of the Mars Relay Network at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
When is this taking place?
Solar conjunction materialize every two years. This time, the hold on releasing commands - called a "command moratorium" - will run from Aug. 28 to Sept. 7, 2019. Some missions will have stopped controlling their spacecraft earlier in preparation for the prorogation.
What happens to the spacecraft?
Although some instruments aboard spacecraft - especially cameras that accomplish large amounts of data - will be inoperative, all of NASA's Mars spacecraft will continue their science; they will just have much uncomplicated "to-do" lists than they normally would carry out.
On the surface of Mars, the prying rover will stop driving, while the InSight lander won't move its robotic arm. Above Mars, both the Odyssey orbiter and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will continue get hold of data from Curiosity and InSight for return to Earth. However, only Odyssey will struggle to transfer that data to Earth before conjunction ends. Meantime, another orbiter, MAVEN, will promote to compile its own science data but won't bedding any relay operations during this time.
All of this means that there will be a interim hitch in the surge of raw images feasible from officiousness, InSight and the other Mars missions. Mars solar conjunction impacts operations of all spacecraft abruptly at Mars, not just NASA's.

By – Tripti Varun
Content - https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7485