A photo from open sources Spacecraft in orbit of Krasnaya planets allowed astronomers to discover that part of the cloud is made of dust and the gas surrounding Siding Spring Comet didn’t just hurt Martian atmosphere, and caused meteor shower on Mars and unprecedented disturbances in the ionosphere in the entire history of observations. October 19 at 21:27 Moscow time, Comet C / 2013 A1 (Siding Spring) approached Mars to the maximum distance – at 139500 km, after which it continued to move in its orbit, already moving away from the red planet. New data from three spacecraft, orbiting Mars (MAVEN, MRO and Mars Express) allowed scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder find out what the span comets turned out to be not as harmless for the planet’s atmosphere as previously thought. In particular, the instruments aboard the Maven (UV spectrograph and neutral gas mass spectrometer and ions) revealed traces of heavy meteor shower. Spectrograph showed such strong emissions of iron and magnesium ions in ultraviolet spectrum that scientists concluded they did not see nothing like this in the entire history of observations, and not just Mars, but other planets, including Earth. Spectrometer confirmed spectrograph results, allowing astronomers to determine dust composition from a cloud of comet that caused meteor shower. In particular, the equipment detected traces of eight metal ions, among which sodium, iron and magnesium. This is the first time in the history of science when scientists managed to determine the partial composition of the object from the Oort Cloud – a hypothetical region of small celestial bodies on the very outskirts The solar system (much further than the Kuiper belt), which have remained since the formation of our planetary system, and the representative of which, apparently, is Comet Siding Spring Some call the Siding Spring passage past Mars an event that happens only once in a lifetime. Actually it is more like an event that happens once a million years. The results demonstrate that the observer on the surface of the planet could see many thousands of shooting stars in an hour, probably enough to call it a meteor storm. That night on Mars must have been spectacular.
Mars
