NEW YORK: A spectacular light show is provided for anyone or anything on Mars by a comet with a view of the sky, but none of NASA’s rovers on the red planet was able to catch a glimpse of it.
The comet cruised past Mars and dumped dust in the planet’s atmosphere, which would have been a spectacular show, but the limitations of the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers currently on Mars prevented them from observing the event.
Calling it an extremely rare event in human history, University of Colorado planetary scientist Nick Schneider said that thousands of shooting stars from the comet that burned up in the atmosphere had streaked across the Martian sky.
Schneider said that while Opportunity and Curiosity were very high-tech robots, they aren’t ideal for observing such events. Opportunity was able to take some snapshots of the comet, known as Sliding Spring, when it was within 87,000 miles of the planet on Oct. 19, but the rovers “don’t take moves,” NASA’s planetary sciences division director James Grin said.
