Earthlings may be treated to a dazzling celestial display this fall as Comet ISON makes a suicidal plunge toward the sun. But spacecraft exploring Mars is poised to get close-up views of the icy wanderer first.
“Comet ISON is paying a visit to the Red Planet,” astronomer Carey Lisse of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, said in a statement. “On Oct 1st, the comet will pass within 0.07 AU from Mars, about six times closer than it will ever come to Earth.”
One AU, or astronomical unit, is the distance between the Earth and sun, about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers). Comet ISON’s Mars flyby, at 0.07 AU, will be about 6.5 million miles (10.4 million km).