NASA Recruits Mars Perseverance Rover to Monitor Solar’s Exercise

NASA Recruits Mars Perseverance Rover to Monitor Solar’s Exercise

By Claire Cameron edited by Jeanna Bryner

NASA has drafted its Mars rover Perseverance to assist monitor the solar’s exercise. Daily for the subsequent two months, the rover will picture the solar with its Mastcam-Z cameras, capturing essential details about sunspots and different massive options that can provide clues to photo voltaic exercise.

Mars is presently passing behind the solar, giving the rover a view of the star’s far facet—a perspective we are able to’t see from Earth. Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z, which consists of zoomable cameras connected to its mast, isn’t designed for photo voltaic monitoring; the rover factors the system on the solar as soon as a day to measure the mud within the Martian air, essential info for climate forecasting on the Pink Planet. However it’s delicate sufficient to see massive sunspots.

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This isn’t the primary time NASA has recruited Perseverance as a photo voltaic observatory—the company additionally used the rover to picture sunspots in 2024.

Sunspots are short-term darkish areas on the solar that happen when intense magnetic fields block out warmth from the inside of the solar. Concentrated in energetic areas, they will final days or months and usually coincide with different phenomena corresponding to photo voltaic flares and coronal mass ejections. If these energetic explosions are pointed towards Earth, they will trigger auroras and even disruptions to satellite tv for pc and radio programs.

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