Someone tell Curiosity to look up. Next year, Mars is getting a cometary visitor that will create a meteor shower with potentially millions of meteors per hour. The fast-moving debris won't put the Curiosity rover at risk, but it may pose a threat to spacecraft in orbit around the planet. Comet C/2013 A1, also known as comet Siding Spring, is due to cross the Red Planet's orbit on 19 October 2014. Bill Cooke of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, calculates that the comet will come within 173,000 kilometres of the planet's surface. At that distance, the comet's halo of gas and rocks, which can stretch to hundreds of thousands of times the width of its core, could engulf Mars and its satellites.
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机译:有人告诉好奇心抬头。明年,火星将吸引一名彗星游客,它将创造一个每小时可能流星数百万颗流星的流星雨。快速移动的碎片不会使“好奇号”漫游车处于危险之中,但可能会对绕地球轨道飞行的航天器构成威胁。 C / 2013 A1彗星,又称“斯丁春天”彗星,将于2014年10月19日越过红色星球的轨道。位于阿拉巴马州Huntsville的NASA马歇尔太空飞行中心的比尔·库克(Bill Cooke)计算得出,这颗彗星将位于距离彗星173,000公里以内行星的表面。在这个距离上,彗星的气体和岩石的光晕可能延伸到其核心宽度的数十万倍,可能会吞噬火星及其卫星。
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