Mars robots in the United States are on vacation for two weeks – SWR Knowledge

Request:
The entire fleet of Mars explorations and Mars will be on vacation for the next two weeks on and around NASA Red Planet. This time the rovers will not roll a meter through the Martian sand, and the Mars satellites will send very little data to Earth. However, the robot vacation machines on Mars are not because the machines have already organized themselves in the union with their artificial intelligence – Uwe Gradwohl explains to us why robots also take vacations …

From October 2 to October 16, the life of robots on Mars will remain the same. Reason for Company Vacation on Mars: Currently two American rovers moving on Mars receive their work orders every day from Earth via radio as a data packet. However, over the next two weeks, Earth and Mars will be on opposite sides of the Sun. So the sun is exactly between Earth and Mars. Radio commands will still reach Mars, but the sun must pass a short distance and strong electric and magnetic fields near the sun can disrupt radio traffic. Radio commands would then come to Mars incomprehensibly and cause the machines to crash. So that the billion dollar rover does not accidentally pierce its own wheel, robots are given a complete break from work. This also applies to satellites orbiting Mars.

The rover’s diligence, which landed wonderfully in the spring, had to measure very little of the weather data during its vacation, observing and recording the tiny dust moving on the surface of Mars – but without all this it moves even its tiny robot limbs. His little companion, the Martian helicopter ingenuity, was condemned for being completely inactive and had to report a status by radio to the diligence at a distance of 175 meters once a week. The Marsquake Station Insight, which has recorded hundreds of Marscakes over the past two years, will continue to listen to the earthquake on Mars – but will store data until the end of the operational interval on Mars and when Earth’s radio connection is free again. Mars satellites also do this in orbit around the red planet.
After a two-week radio break, it will be another full week until the cached data and images are sent to Earth – only then will robotic life return to normal on Mars. This also applies to the Chinese rover that has been rolling in the plains since May – the Chinese space agency has so far been quiet about its holiday plans.