Deep space ‘snowball’ nears close shave with Mars Source: ift.tt/eKERsB – Saturday, October 18, 2014Washington (AFP) – A comet the size of a small mountain is about to skim past Mars, and NASA hopes its spacecraft will be able to photograph the once-in-a-million-years encounter. The comet, known as Siding Spring (C/2013 A1), is set to hurtle past Mars at a close distance of about 88,000 miles (141,600 kilometers). The closest pass is expected to happen Sunday at 2:27 pm (1827 GMT). Astronomers do not expect it will come any where near colliding with Mars, but they do hope it will be close enough to reveal clues about the origins of the solar system. That is because the comet is believed to have originated billions of years ago in the Oort Cloud, a distant region of space at the outskirts of the solar system. Comets such as C/2013 A1 are essentially dirty icy snowballs with rocks and dust embedded in frozen gasses, said Dan Brown, an astronomy expert at Nottingham Trent University. It is on its first run towards the center of our solar system and its material is virtually unchanged by the rays of the sun and can give us an insight to the material composition of our early solar system 4.6 billion years ago. – Fast and powdery – The comet is flying through space at a breakneck speed of 122,400 miles per hour. Another interesting thing about the comet, about a mile wide in diameter, is that it is only about as solid as a pile of talcum powder. NASA has manuevered its Mars orbiters to the far side of the planet so they wont be All Related Read More…… The post Deep space ‘snowball’ nears close shave with Mars appeared first on GLOBAL NEWS. ift.tt/11RISBO
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 18:56:12 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015