This study examines the methodology for operating and communicating with NASA's Curiosity Rover (MSL) during the 2019 solar conjunction. For MSL, solar conjunction occurs when the viewing angle between the Sun and Mars from Earth's perspective falls below 3 degrees, which occurs roughly every two Earth years and lasts for about two weeks. This presents a challenge for engineers operating a vehicle on Mars because the degraded signal to noise ratio disrupts data flow between Earth and the spacecraft. As a result, operators designate a command moratorium in which no commands are sent to the rover and instead design long-term plans that are uplinked weeks in advance (rather than the nominal case of daily uplinks). Coordinating communications with the rover leading up to and following conjunction requires negotiations with several orbiters, another lander, and the Deep Space Network (DSN) each with their own set of constraints. It is the Strategic Comm Planning T coordination, which acts as a baseline for the conjunction Comm team faced additional complications such as the arrival of two new spacecraft at Mars - Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO).


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Communications with Curiosity during solar conjunction


    Contributors:

    Publication date :

    2020-03-07


    Type of media :

    Preprint


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English



    Communications with Curiosity during Solar Conjunction

    Quade, Jackson / Anabtawi, Aseel / Thomas, Steven et al. | IEEE | 2020


    Communications with Curiosity during Solar Conjunction

    Laubach, Sharon / Thomas, Steven / Anabtawi, Aseel et al. | NTRS | 2020


    Communicating with Mars during periods of solar conjunction

    Morabito, D. D. / Hastrup, R. | NTRS | 2002


    Communicating with Mars during periods of solar conjunction

    Morabito, D. / Hastrup, R. | IEEE | 2002


    BEATING CURIOSITY

    David, Leonard | Online Contents | 2017