Originally posted by dreamfox1
reply to post by MisterMiyagi

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Well it might and might not due to Mars being smacked by a comet by next year.
But then again it could just because of that event.

C/2013 A1, discovered by Robert McNaught at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia, was spotted on 3 January out between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. After digging into data from other observatories, astronomers were able to reconstruct its orbit going back 74 days. Projecting that forward, it became clear that it would fly pretty close to Mars sometime on 19 October 2014 -- which means there is a slight chance of it impacting the planet, according to astronomer Ian Musgrave. Now, further observations have increased that chance (though it's still not very likely, before anyone starts panicking about the fate of the Curiosity rover). The current estimate is that C/2013 A1 will come within 0.00073AU (109,000km) of Mars, but uncertainty in measurements of its path thus far mean that it could end up as far away as 0.008AU (1,197,000km) or plowing straight into the planet's surface. It has a retrograde orbit around the Sun, giving it a high velocity relative to Mars of 56km/s -- that, combined with its relatively large size (estimated as around 50km) could leave a crater on Mars of 500km across and 2km deep, according to astronomer Leonid Elenin.

Originally posted by Phage

Very exciting news indeed but is it really going to happen so soon?

I doubt it.

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