There is also a risk that an antenna equipped with auto-tracking will begin following the Sun's movements instead of the satellite once they are no longer inline with each other. This is because the Sun acts as a large electromagnetic noise generator which creates a signal much stronger than the satellite's tracking signal. One example of limitations caused by the solar conjunction occurred when the
NASA-
JPL team put the
Curiosity rover on
Mars' surface in
autonomous operation mode for 25 days during the conjunction. In autonomous mode
Curiosity suspends all movements and active science operations but retains communication-independent experiments (e.g. record atmospheric and radiation data). A more recent example occurred with the Mars rover
Perseverance in October 2021. ==See also==