Md.-Made Instruments Help NASA Collect Debris From Comet
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- There's nothing like being at the right place at the right time. That includes the planet Mars.
Alex DeMetrick reports NASA spacecraft were there as a comet brushed by the Red Planet.
It took millions of years for a comet billions of years old to travel close enough to the sun for its tail to switch on--a journey that would take it very near to NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars.
"Who would know that just at the time we got our Maven spacecraft to Mars, comet Siding Spring would come flying by," said Dr. Paul Mahaffy, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured comet Siding Spring as it approached what would be a very close fly-by of Mars. It would miss the planet by just 84,000 miles.
Debris from its tail slammed into the Martian atmosphere at 35 miles a second. Those bits of a comet's DNA were then captured by those NASA spacecraft.
"Chromium and nickle and iron, sodium, potassium. It's just fascinating stuff," Mahaffy said.
But to collect the comet's secrets, precautions first had to be made.
"We were all hiding behind Mars. We wanted to make sure that one of these very fast particles didn't damage the spacecraft. But then as soon as the comet passed by, we turned on our instruments and then started making measurements," said Mahaffy.
Which NASA has now released. New science, instruments built in Maryland, helped collect of an old leftover from the formation of our solar system.
"It's just fascinating to see these very, very ancient objects come in once in a while. It would have been a spectacular show on Mars," Mahaffy said.
It would have been quite a light show. When debris from the comet's tail hit the atmosphere, scientists think thousands of shooting stars formed above the Martian surface.
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