14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier this month, NASA announced that, come October 19, a comet dubbed Siding Spring would fly by Mars. The comet, whose official name is C/2013 A1, is expected to get as close as 87,000 miles (roughly 139,500 kilometers) to the Red Planet.
Just to put things into perspective, it need be said that this represents half the distance between Earth and the Moon. This means that, in space talk, tomorrow's rendezvous is going to be one really close encounter.
Interestingly enough, it appears that Mars doesn't get visited by comets all that often. In fact, NASA scientists say that the encounter expected to take place this coming October 19 is a one-in-a-million-years sort of event.
“On October 19, we're going to observe an event that happens maybe once every million years. We're getting ready for a spectacular set of observations,” Jim Green, director of NASA's planetary science division, said in a recent statement.
To get a better idea of comet Siding Spring's anatomy and how its passing by Mars will alter the Red Planet's atmosphere ever so slightly, check out the Space infographic below.
I don't know about you, but I for one found it quite educational and entertaining. Especially the part saying that dust left behind by the comet has high chances to cause auroras in Mars' sky. Pretty cool, right?
Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration.