Mars Fleet and Comet Siding Spring
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- Visualizations by:
- Greg Shirah
- View full credits
This visualization shows NASA’s fleet of Mars orbiters, landers, and rovers during the planet’s close encounter with Comet Siding Spring. C/2013 A1, better known as Comet Siding Spring, will make a remarkably close pass of Mars on October 19, 2014. At closest approach, Comet Siding Spring will come within 82,000 miles of the Red Planet – just one-third of the distance from the Earth to the Moon. During the flyby, NASA will position its Mars fleet both to protect it from comet dust, and to make observations of the comet and its effects on the upper atmosphere of Mars.
Flying past comet Siding-Spring the Mars orbiting fleet is faded on while Siding Spring passes very close to Mars
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
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Animators
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
- Ernie Wright (USRA)
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Scientists
- Bruce Jakosky (LASP)
- David Folta (NASA/GSFC)
- Kelly Fast (NASA/HQ)
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Producer
- Dan Gallagher (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
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Project support
- Ian Jones (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Datasets used in this visualization
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DE421 (JPL DE421)
ID: 752Planetary ephemerides
This dataset can be found at: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?ephemerides#planets
See all pages that use this dataset -
GSFC Flight Dynamics Facility Ephemeris
ID: 812
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.