Mars rovers, orbiters on their own for a while

About every 25 months, Mars' orbit brings it behind the Sun from our perspective here on Earth. This presents a problem for NASA, as well as the European Space Agency and Indian Space Research Organisation which also have spacecraft orbiting the red planet.

To ensure interference from the Sun does not scramble communications, beginning Saturday, October 2, no commands may be sent while Mars while it is with two degrees of the Sun in our sky. This is nothing new for NASA which has had a continuous robotic presence on Mars for two decades.  Solar conjunction, or the point where Earth, the Sun and Mars form a line occurs Thursday at 11:35 pm EDT.  NASA wont attempt to send commands to these robots until October 14.

While the teams that plan everything these rovers and orbiters do, down to the minute take, some well deserved time off, these robots wont be sitting idle. To-do lists have been uploaded ahead of this period. This includes some light science work, as well regular as health checks.

Some of these missions may attempt to send data back to Earth, knowing that anything that is lost can be resent. The most precious commodity with any space mission is time.

A pair of minor meteor showers will peek this week.

The October Camelopardalids peak Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. This is a minor meteor shower with only a few meteors per hour expected but with mild temperatures and a new Moon on Wednesday, it's worth looking to the North if you find yourself outside on the deck enjoying the mild temperatures. 

The Camelopardalids appear to come from the constellation Camelopardalis, one of the less distinguishable constellations.  Basically a triangle low in the North, ancient Greeks through it looked like a giraffe, an animal they described as looking like a camel (kamēlos) and leopard (pardalis). Some constellations looks a lot like the animals or other object they are named for, this isn't one of them. It's pretty much just a triangle of stars to the left of Perseus, in the north.

Similarly the Draconid meteor shower peaks on Thursday night.  The constellation Draco the dragon is also in the North and looks a lot more like its namesake.  It is also higher above the horizon which makes meteors that much more likely to be seen.

This week's new moon helps make any meteors that do appear, that much more visible.