Rush to Mars: Comet impact could make Red Planet inhabitable

February 28th, 2013

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

Comet Siding Spring. (Image from nasa.org / Spitzer Space Telescope)

A comet near Mars may strike it in a powerful impact, potentially making the planet much warmer. The Red Planet is luring many entrepreneurs, including billionaire Dennis Tito, who aims to beat other nations by sending a man and a woman to Mars.

The make-or-break window for this possible game-changer is
October 2014. At that time, an Oort cloud comet called C/2013 A1,
first discovered last month, will approach Mars, missing it by
about 35,000 km, which is quite close.

However the comet’s trajectory is still uncertain, which leaves
a small chance it could impact the planet, said Russian astronomer
Leonid Elenin, who worked on calculating the course of the
celestial body. The comet will be travelling at a speed of 56
kilometers per second relative to Mars when it passes; if they do
collide, the resulting explosion would be equal to a 20,000-gigaton
bomb blast – powerful enough to leave a 50-kilometer crater on the
planetary surface

The event would trigger a major change of the Martian climate,
Australian space scientist Robert Matson explained. The impact
would evaporate large amounts of water and carbon dioxide ice from
the comet, spread across a planetary scale, making the climate on
Mars much warmer due to the greenhouse effect.

On the other hand, the blast would also raise huge clouds of
dust and could trigger volcanic activity in the mostly-inert
planet. Both would make more sunlight bounce off the Martian
atmosphere, which would make the planet colder. A heating effect is
likely to prevail, however.

But such dramatic change is far from certain, with more
observation needed to narrow down the comet’s trajectory. Even if
it is a simple close flyby, it will still be a rare chance to take
high-resolution pictures of the object with the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter mission.

The rush to Mars

Private space companies are now challenging nations not only for
Low Earth Orbit deliveries but also for reaching outer space. Last
week, billionaire and private space explorer Dennis Tito launched
the non-commercial Inspiration Mars Foundation, which hopes to send
a manned mission to flyby Mars in 2018.

The crew of the capsule could be a married couple yet to be
selected, Tito announced on Wednesday, who would have to not only
cope with the difficulties of a Spartan and low-gravity ship
environment, but also with spending just over 500 days confined
together in an enclosed space.

The mission plans to use a modified SpaceX Dragon capsule with
an inflatable living module attached. It will be mostly carried by
gravity on its way to Mars and back home, with little help from the
rocket engines, a maneuver known as a ‘free return’ trajectory. The
same approach was used for NASA’s Apollo missions to the Moon.

The Tito-funded spacecraft would pass Mars at the distance of
around 160 kilometers at its closest point. The return landing on
Earth would be at a record-high speed of 14.2 kilometers per
second, which would require a special and highly resilient heat
shield.

More traditional players in the space arena are also eyeing Mars
as the next frontier. NASA and ESA have a well-established presence
around and on Mars. And this week, India confirmed that it is
within the timeframe to launch its Mangalyaan mission to Mars in
November 2013.

Russia plans to land a rover on Mars in 2018, hopefully
rehabilitating its space program after the embarrassing failure of
its Phobos-Grunt survey mission. There is also collaboration
between Finnish, Russian and Spanish participants on a plan to
deliver several dozen landers to Mars to form a meteorological
observation network on its surface.

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