NASA is taking steps to protect its Mars orbiters, while preserving opportunities to gather valuable scientific data, as Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring heads toward a close flyby of Mars on Oct. 19. The comet’s nucleus will miss Mars by about 82,000 miles (132,000 kilometers), shedding material hurtling at about 35 miles (56 kilometers) per second, relative to Mars and Mars-orbiting spacecraft. At that velocity, even the smallest particle…could cause significant damage to a spacecraft… [More at link]
-
Recent Posts
Archives
Links
general
mission instruments
- CRISM: Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars
- CTX: Context Camera
- HiRISE: High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment
- MARSIS: Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding
- SHARAD: Shallow Radar
- THEMIS: Thermal Emission Imaging System
missions
- All Mars missions list
- Curiosity rover
- ExoMars
- Hope (al-Amal) orbiter
- InSight
- Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN)
- Mars Exploration Rovers (MER)
- Mars Express (MEX)
- Mars Odyssey
- Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) / Mangalyaan
- Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
- Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)
- Perseverance Rover
- Tianwen-1 orbiter/rover
news