Sunday, 27 January 2013

Is Mars expected to go through the tail of Comet Siding?

Short answer: Sort of



Long answer:



One week before the encounter, Wikipedia says no. The comet's nucleus will pass by Mars at a distance somewhere of about 139,000 km from the center of Mars - way too far for any predicted collision. The main tail of the comet, too, will most likely miss Mars by about "10 Mars diameters" - roughly 64,000 km. However, small quantities of dust particles could (and most likely will) stray away from the main tail and hit Mars, Deimos and Phobos. This graphic gives a good picture of the encounter:



enter image description here



However, Mars may pass through the comet's coma and be hit by any dust particles there.



It will certainly be observable from the Martian surface: The comet will have an apparent magnitude of -6 at its peak. It will be quite a show, but nothing extraordinarily special.



The damage to orbiting spacecraft around Mars will likely be minimal. 90 minutes after the comet passes Mars, the worst of the dust particles will hit the spacecraft. The tiny barrage will only last about 20 minutes, though, and there is a low probability of damage. In fact, the various orbiters will take pictures of the comet and try to analyze it to learn more about its properties.



I hope this helps.



Other sources:



http://mars.nasa.gov/comets/sidingspring/



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars



Update:



As of about an hour after the encounter, Mars still exists. Read this article for some not-so-juicy details.

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