New comet's potential Mars collision in 2014 explained

Comet Siding Spring will actually be the second close shave of Mars by a passing comet within a time span of just over a year.

By Joe Rao, SPACE.com
Tue, Mar 05 2013

A newfound comet is apparently on course to have an exceedingly close call with the planet Mars in October 2014, and there is a chance — albeit small — that the comet may even collide with the Red Planet.

The new comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) was discovered Jan. 3 by the Scottish-Australian astronomer Robert H. McNaught, a prolific observer of both comets and asteroids who has 74 comet discoveries to his name.

McNaught is a participant in the Siding Spring Survey a program that hunts down asteroids that might closely approach the Earth. He discovered the new comet using the 0.5-meter Uppsala Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, New South Wales, Australia.

Pre-discovery images of the comet from Dec. 8, 2012 by the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona were quickly found. Because the comet was discovered as part of its survey for asteroids, it bears the name of the observatory, Siding Spring. Officially it is catalogued as C/2013 A1.

When it was discovered, Comet Siding Spring was 669 million miles (1.07 billion kilometers) from the sun. Based on its orbital eccentricity, it is apparently a new or "virgin" comet, traveling in a parabolic orbit and making its very first visit to the vicinity of the sun. It is expected to pass closest to the sun (called perihelion) on Oct. 25, 2014 at a distance of 130 million miles (209 million km).

But, less than a week earlier, on Oct. 19, 2014, the comet — whose nucleus is estimated to be anywhere from 5 to 30 miles (8 to 50 km) in diameter — is projected to cross the orbit of Mars and pass very close to that planet. Preliminary calculations suggest that nominally at closest approach, Comet Siding Spring will come to within 63,000 miles (101,000 km) of Mars.

However, because the comet is currently very far out in space and has been under scrutiny for less than three months, the circumstances of its orbit will likely need to be refined in the coming weeks and months. As such, the comet's approach to Mars might ultimately end up being farther or closer than what current predictions suggest. In fact, last Wednesday (Feb. 27) observations made by Leonid Elenin, a reputable Russian astronomer who works at the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics,suggested that the comet could pass even closer — just 25,700 miles (41,300 km) from the center of Mars.

According to Elenin: "On the 19th October 2014, the comet might reach apparent magnitude of -8 to -8.5, as seen from Mars!” (This would make the comet 15 to 25 times brighter than Venus). "Perhaps it will be possible to acquire high-resolution images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)," he added.

Then there is also the small possibility that the comet could collide with Mars.

Moving at 35 miles (56 km) per second, such a collision could create an impact crater on Mars up to ten times the diameter of the comet's nucleus and up to 1.25 miles (2 km) deep, with an energy equivalent up to of 2 x 10^10 megatons!

Most readers will recall Comet Shoemaker-Levy's plunge into Jupiter in July 1994 which left dark telltale scars on Jupiter’s cloud tops for many months thereafter.

Collision or not, Comet Siding Spring will definitely come extremely close to Mars less than 20 months from now. Incredibly, this will actually be the second close shave of Mars by a passing comet within a time span of just over a year.

On Oct. 1 of this year, the much awaited Comet ISON is due to pass 6.5 million miles (10.5 million km) from Mars on its way toward a grazing encounter with the sun in November. That rendezvous is close enough in its own right to be categorized as exceptional and yet, Siding Spring will approach about 100 times closer.

Discovery of Animal that can Survive in Space

Tartigrades! The only known creatures which can survive in the vacuum of space.

Solar Flares on the Sun Captured on Video

Space Infographics...

Wow...remember when this stuff mattered. It stoked imaginations, kindled dreams, and launched an entire country into space. Now, it seems like it was just an old television show from the 1960s. And the imagination has been replaced by aggression, the technological advances propelling us to space now is used to create weapons. And dreams of space travel have been replaced by the nightmare of constant war. That  is not what we were meant for. Our greatness has been murdered by our bloodlust.--jef

Source: SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

Earth Fly Over --Time Lapse View from Space

Nasa picks deep-space astronaut ship

(Thanks to Adam for the share...--jef)

 By Jonathan Amos BBC science correspondent

 

The MPCV will take humans beyond the ISS, to destinations such as Mars

Nasa has confirmed that the vehicle it will use to send astronauts to places like asteroids will be based on its Orion capsule concept.

Orion was the ship being built to return America to the Moon before the project was cancelled last year by President Barack Obama.

The US space agency says the financial investment and the engineering lessons learned should not be wasted.

It wants the new Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) to benefit from that heritage.

Mr Obama has said he would like humans to visit a space rock in the 2020s. The MPCV would be the ship that takes them there. It would also have a role in any human mission to Mars - the destination Nasa is aiming to reach in perhaps the 2030s.

 

Orion was conceived as a high-spec vehicle that could visit the ISS and do deep-space destinations

 

Lockheed Martin was the American company leading the development of Orion. It will keep the prime contractor role on the new ship.

"We are committed to human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and look forward to developing the next generation of systems to take us there," said Nasa Administrator Charles Bolden in a statement.

The MPCV will be capable of carrying four astronauts on 21-day missions. It would start those journeys by launching on the top of an as-yet-undefined big rocket and end them by splashing down in the Pacific off California.

Nasa says the 23-ton spacecraft would have a pressurized volume of 19.5 cubic metres (690 cu ft), just over nine cubic metres (300 cu ft) of which would be habitable.

On missions longer than 21 days, the MPCV would be attached to other modules.

"During these missions to asteroids or Mars, or to the moons of Mars, this vehicle would be just maintained in more dormant mode while the crew would be in another volume which would have longer-term consumables and capability to support them," explained Doug Cooke, associate administrator for the agency's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington.

"In terms of deep space exploration, we hope to have test flights obviously in this decade. We're not exactly sure when, but certainly as early as possible. Those would be missions beyond low-Earth orbit."

 

 

Investment in Orion has already topped $5bn

 

Orion was one of the centrepieces of former President George W Bush's Constellation programme, which sought to return Americans to the Moon using two new rockets and a high-spec capsule.

But the initiative was cancelled by his successor because of its burgeoning cost - $9bn at the time Mr Obama ordered it be shut down. Investment in Orion alone to date is put at slightly more than $5bn.

Many commentators expected elements of Constellation to re-surface in whatever programme replaced it, and some sort of Orion derivative was an obvious prospect.

But Nasa moved swiftly on Tuesday to correct the idea that the adoption of the MPCV was somehow a move on the part of the agency to protect "old ways" of doing business.

Mr Cooke said the Orion government and industry team had shown exceptional creativity in finding ways to push costs down.

However, he could not say what the final development bill would be or how much the recurring costs would be on operational MPCVs.

Nasa will also need at some stage to define a heavy-lift rocket to put in orbit the MPCV and any associated exploration equipment.

 

 

The SpaceX company claims its Dragon capsule will also be a highly capable vehicle

 

The US Congress, through the Nasa Authorisation Act 2010, has mandated that this rocket should be launching by the end of 2016, although the agency has previously stated that it views this timeline as challenging. It promises more details on the launcher "in the coming weeks".

Nasa's current fleet of space vehicles - the shuttles - are being retired, with the Atlantis orbiter set to end their operation for good with a final flight in July.

America will then rely on Russian Soyuz vehicles to get its astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) until a new wave of US commercial carriers enter service around the middle of the decade.

In the main, these crew carriers will be substantially cheaper to build and operate than the MPCV, and will not be capable of venturing beyond low-Earth orbit where the ISS resides.
However, the SpaceX company claims the Dragon capsule it is developing for journeys to the ISS will eventually be able to match any task given to the Lockheed Martin ship, and do it at a greatly reduced price.

Hawking to Humans: Outer Space or Extinction

Stephen Hawking to Human Race: Move to Outer Space or Face Extinction 
The Huffington Post | Hunter Stuart | 08- 6-10

vidlink
Is the future of the human race in outer space? Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, in an interview with Big Think, warns that if humans can't find another planet to inhabit, they will face extinction.

"We are entering an increasingly dangerous period in our history," Hawking says. "There have been a number of times in the past when survival has been a question of touch and go," like the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963, and the frequency of such occasions "is likely to increase in the future."

Because we are rapidly depleting the finite natural resources that Earth provides, and because our genetic code "carries selfish and aggressive instincts," our "only chance for longterm survival" may be to "spread out into space."

But how do we get there? Scientists estimate that it would take roughly 50,000 years to make it to the nearest star, if we traveled using chemical-fuel rockets. To arrive within our life span, humans would need the technology to travel at near the speed of light and to remain shielded from cosmic radiation for the duration of the journey.