Collision Course? A Comet Heads for Mars

[Cath]

[sologuitarist61]

Thanks for the post Cath, hadn't seen that one. Be interesting to see what happens if it does hit, let's hope that one of the orbiters is in the right position to see the impact!

[tuckstar]

Nice little find. I had heard a bit about this comet, just a little disappointed about the odds to hit mars. That would be something to see. No doubt it would be in the day or behind cloud. ;-)

[DaveGarland]

Unfortunately Mars sets about 8 ish around about then so not much hope of seeing anything from home. But surely there's some great picture opportunities for probes etc whether it hits or misses. Exciting

[Cath]

What we need to do is to take advantage of the opportunity and see if we can have a go at pushing it very slightly of it's current path - to make sure it DOES hit Mars

[Pig]

Maybe if we all put our vacuum cleaners on at the same time and point it at Mars we can suck it closer

[alan potts]

What if we put too many on and it hits us?

Alan

[Vince1963]

Thanks for sharing that Cath.. there are some interesting things there that could happen, hopefully we'll get to see something ant one or a number of these.

[Stargazer_00]

Half the meteors that hit us are produced by the impacts of comets or meteors hitting mars. To be honest I hope it misses, the last thing we need is more debris flying around that could hit us.

[Cath]

If it did hit Mars I would imagine the debris bits would be too small to be of any harm to us, their would be a lot of bits flying around but can't see how any large ones would survive the Mars impact intact.

[Stargazer_00]

I think they get thrown up by the impact from its mantle rather than debris from the impacting object.

Certainly not 1km objects. But certainly lots of bus & car sized i'd imagine.

[Stargazer_00]

That said though, 35 milion megatonnes is a very very very very very big explosion.