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Originally Posted by Schnabel
Just wondering, will Mars ever get too far away that the rover won't be able to send anything back to Earth?
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No. In fact, Mars is almost at its greatest possible distance from Earth right now, about 390 million kilometers as of today. We don't have any significant new problems communicating with the rover vs. what we were able to do when they landed. But we will briefly lose all communications with the rovers when Earth and Mars are in conjunction (on opposite sides of the Sun) during the period from October 18 to October 26. During this time, the rovers will be hibernating and just waiting for Earth to reappear on the other side of the Sun (when viewed from Mars) so they can re-establish communications and continue their exploration efforts. Note that this is the second time that the rovers will go through a communications blackout due to a solar conjunction. We went through this before back in September 2004. The rovers calmly waited through the blackout period with no problems, and readily re-established communications when the conjunction ended.
-dave
(for a cool Earth-Mars orbital simulation, see the
UCAR Mars orbit web site)
.