Chandra Awaits Comet Siding Spring's Approach to Mars
Submitted by chandra on Fri, 2014-10-10 08:33On October 19th, Chandra will join with telescopes across the world, in orbit around Earth, and even on and around Mars, as Comet Siding Spring makes an extremely close approach to the Red Planet.
This is an extremely exciting event because scientists have determined this comet has been traveling for maybe a million years from the distant Oort Cloud. This will be the first time that humans have ever captured images of a comet from the Oort Cloud, which is an enormous reservoir of left over debris from the formation of the Solar System. (Previous observations and spacecraft visits of comets came from those that originated in the much closer Kuiper Belt.)