Astronomers Observe Siding Spring Comet Passing Mars
- 10 years ago
A comet has passed Mars, traveling at speeds of 125 thousand miles per hour as astronomers watched using satellites in atmospheric orbit, and rovers positioned on the surface of Mars.
A comet has passed Mars, traveling at speeds of 125 thousand miles per hour as astronomers watched using satellites in atmospheric orbit, and rovers positioned on the surface of Mars.
Experts believe that the Siding Spring comet originated in the Oort Cloud which sits on the edge of our solar system, and hasn’t changed significantly since it formed around four point five billion years ago.
Carey Lisse, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in the United States is quoted as saying: "So think about a comet that started to travel probably at the dawn of man and it's just now coming in. And the reason we can actually observe it is because we've built satellites and rovers and we've now got these outposts at Mars."
Some NASA probes were repositioned to the other side of the red planet to avoid any possible damage from the comet debris.
The 33 hundred foot wide core of the comet is made of ice, (1,9,1) but the coma stretches to about 12 thousand miles long.
It passed by about 87 thousand miles away from Mars, (3,1,2) and experts are analyzing the data that has been sent from the rovers and satellites.
A comet has passed Mars, traveling at speeds of 125 thousand miles per hour as astronomers watched using satellites in atmospheric orbit, and rovers positioned on the surface of Mars.
Experts believe that the Siding Spring comet originated in the Oort Cloud which sits on the edge of our solar system, and hasn’t changed significantly since it formed around four point five billion years ago.
Carey Lisse, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in the United States is quoted as saying: "So think about a comet that started to travel probably at the dawn of man and it's just now coming in. And the reason we can actually observe it is because we've built satellites and rovers and we've now got these outposts at Mars."
Some NASA probes were repositioned to the other side of the red planet to avoid any possible damage from the comet debris.
The 33 hundred foot wide core of the comet is made of ice, (1,9,1) but the coma stretches to about 12 thousand miles long.
It passed by about 87 thousand miles away from Mars, (3,1,2) and experts are analyzing the data that has been sent from the rovers and satellites.