[amsat-bb] Mars satellites' orbits changed to avoid comet tail

[Mike Lemons]

When I first heard this story on the radio, I had to check the calender 
to see if it was April First, but it is a real story.

A comet was discovered early last year coming up from below the plane of 
the ecliptic. It is named after the Siding Spring Observatory in 
Australia where it was spotted in a 20 inch scope.

It is expected to pass Mars at a distance of 132,000 kilometers on 
October 19th. For scale, that is about a third of the distance from the 
Earth to the Moon. No comet has ever been recorded coming that close to 
the Earth.

After this near-miss (George Carlin would say, near-hit), Mars will pass 
through the dust tail of the comet 90 minutes later. NASA and JPL want 
their satellites to be on the other side of Mars when this happens.

http://mars.nasa.gov/comets/sidingspring/
http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2014/07/comet-fireworks-mars
http://mars.nasa.gov/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1675
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-244


Mike
KI6ADN