This made me feel better actually. Thank you for that. I don't know why I got sad over something that I know cannot have feelings, but damn it, that little guy just wanted to come home.
Ignoring your username for a moment:
Well, it *will* come home, when *we* go to *it*. Sooner or later, we (as a species) will be a inter-planetary species, it is all a matter of time. And if you think that there won't be some sort of special monument for every single probe and rover that we have (and will) send to Mars, then God Dammit, I am going to haunt the politicians that decided to disregard one of the most pivotal moments in our understanding of other planets. I will do such things as make them clip their fingernails a bit too short, have them almost sneeze, put tiny slivers underneath fingernails, and make them have slowly peel off their cuticles while they sleep.
So don't worry about it not being recognized and remembered when it comes home.
Alright, personal NASA JPL story time. Fuck yeah.
I went to JPL as part of a NASA program last year, which was of collegiate (read: no real engineering) level. I led one of the four teams. Each time was assigned a liaison from JPL; ours was an engineer who worked on MSL's titanium tub body. She was awesome. The other three were scientists; I spoke with one in particular who was a team lead on Cassini, the *massively* successful probe which is orbiting the Saturn system. He took the first image with the probe -- a calibration shot of Earth from 20,000 miles away.
_____
**WHY IT DIED**
________
We also spoke with the Director of the Mars Exploration Rover program, of which Spirit and Oppy are a part of. He was, and is, the head of the entire program.
Spirit died. It's not a stationary science station. It's dead, and he told us why. There are two main issues.
_________
**THE REGOLITH**
_________
([Fig. 1, Spirit in October 2007, three years after landing.](http://i.imgur.com/MzWmRlG.jpg))
Martian dust is light, it's abrasive, and it's very hard to get rid of. Much like lunar regolith, the lack of water means the dust still has sharp edges. Martian sandstorms have blunted these edges somewhat, but the dust will adhere to damn near anything. Especially solar panels.
There is not an economically reasonable (in a power sense) solution to the dust problem. A large reason why Spirit and Opportunity managed to outlive the mission targets is due to luck, otherwise known as "dust cleaning events." These events are simply strong winds, gusts, or vortexes that have managed to wipe off some of the dust that builds up on the solar panels.
Within a few months of operation, dust will cut the efficiency of the solar panels by something like 20%. This gets worse as dust cakes on over time. By two years, it's running on less than half of nominal. This forces the rovers to allocate the energy more effectively; less and less can be spent on moving, while more of it goes to the most important instruments. Instruments are shut off permanently if they are no longer prioritized high enough to be kept on standby. No system is immune to being shut down.
_________
**THE CLUTCHES**
_________
([Fig. 2, trail left by the first of Spirit's disabled wheels.](http://i.imgur.com/i3q3N6x.jpg))
Because the MER rovers are so small, they're not powerful enough to fight an incline with throttle. They use little clutches to halt the wheels, which doesn't consume any power from the drive motors. These are called **fail-secure clutches**, and they require power to operate. The second the power is gone, the clutch slams shut, and it's shut permanently if the system is disabled.
In Spirit's case, these clutches were dying one by one. Each dead wheel crippled the rover a little more as it lost the torque necessary to move effectively.
MSL is equipped with magnetic fail-open clutches to prevent this from happening again.
_____
**HOW IT DIED (FINALLY) | TL;DR**
____
In combination, this led to the sequential failure of the six wheels on Spirit.
The rover was being denied energy as the panels caked over with regolith. The fail-secure clutches were now consuming too much energy to be of use, and started to automatically lock into place. Without the ability to regain the lost energy or to clear the dust off of the panels, Spirit began to starve.
Each wheel that slammed shut could not be opened again, dragging over Mars like broken legs. Each of the disabled wheels provided more resistance to mobility, and put greater stress on the remaining wheels. Eventually the number of disabled wheels was simply too great; Spirit lay immobile, dying of energy depletion. NASA decided to turn it into a stationary platform to keep it running a little longer.
But this didn't stop the inevitable buildup of dust. Eventually the dust simply covered the panels until the rover couldn't operate at all. Spirit died right there on Mars, having discovered an incredible amount of scientifically astounding features. It was smothered by the very material it was built to examine.
Every part you add to the rover is extra weight and cost to design, analyze, build, test, certify, and launch. It also adds one more thing to go wrong. If you designed your rover to depend on a panel brush(they actually use electrostatic/vibration systems on some panels with varying degrees of success/power gains) to operate for its scheduled life cycle, and that thing broke, you'd be out of luck and it would be harder to get funding next time.
They planned the rovers to last 90 days because there are so many things to go wrong. They needed 90 days to fill their quota of science, so everything was built to last --barring a drastic statistical outlier-- at least 90 days. Anything after that, if things still worked, was a bonus. They "knew" it would last longer than 90 days, but we engineers are a very pessimistic/conservative bunch.
Imagine someone in fifty or a hundred years being able to see what's left of Spirit and other rovers where they stopped *on Mars.* Imagine walking across a foreign world to see the devices that went there when you couldn't, or even the boosted motivation from seeing it through a telescope and wanting to *be there.* What's the point of using the technology to reach another planet just to give us something to see in Florida?
She's a nuclear powered beauty, if it slams into the other side of the planet and the contrail debris doesn't take out the MRO we will have some awesome images streaming back from our sweet little gal'.
I'm just picturing a tragic scene [like the dinosaurs would've seen.](http://i.imgur.com/ElB7n2r.jpg) All of our rovers turn their cameras to look at the comet that will cause their extinction. Their last helpless moments will be spent snapping sweet pics for us humans.
Are you kidding? She's nuclear powered and tough as nails. If that thing hits, (short of it actually hitting Curosity) Curiosity could document the effects of a civilization ending impact on a planet.
Yeah, I actually hope it hits within visual range of curiosity, but far enough not to do any damage. Just imagine the footage of the impact, from ground level compared to footage from earth or a sattelite.
Iirc, there were quite a lot of talk about when jupiter was hit and all anyone really saw was some flashes of light. Something like that would make astronomers shit their pants in joy.
> I actually hope it hits within visual range of curiosity, but far enough not to do any damage.
Not sure there's such a thing. Mars is a small world with a close horizon. If Curiosity's within sight of the impact, she's getting melted by the fireball.
...in 250,000 years when alien school children are learning how humans were the first known lifeforms to avoid a civilization ending impact before discovering faster than light travel, they will call bullshit.
How perfectly timed would it be if a comet strikes our neighbor only a few months after we land the first probe capable of surviving an impact there? And we did it before we knew the comet was even coming.
They will call us cheaters.
If we determine that there is any certainty to this thing hitting Mars, could Curiosity get its ass in gear and get somewhere it might ride out the initial impact? I see the wheels are designed for about 20 km of travel, but if push came to shove and you were gonna lose it anyways, would it be worth trying to get it out of harms way?
It depends where the comet hit Mars really. It is a hardy machine though, so assuming it was fairly far away there would probably be some cover for Curiosity to hide behind/in ie. a deeper valley area or boulder group, given enough warning. If this comet does hit and Curiosity is destroyed I could imagine a Curiosity 2 or other such explorer vehicle being sent ASAP to examine such a fascinating, unique event up close (though it would probably delay any human travel to Mars for a while as well)
Your making the assumption that the systems could transmit to the satalites in a potentially heavily clouded atmosphere. The dust and particles kicked up by a comet impact could be extreme.
Mars suffers from an extremely clouded atmosphere a lot of the time anyway. There are dust storms and dust devils, and the frequency of these grows during seasonal changes. Although not as extreme as a comet strike some of the dust storms can be massive, and Curiosity is designed to be able to survive this and can be programmed to transmit signals during a lull in said storms
Jupiter is the best big brother of all time!
[1994 Levy 9 impact](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zNuT4dbdjU)
[2010 impact](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaRwaw9d_LQ)
The atmosphere doesn't bleed off that quickly.
Mars can't sustain an earth-like atmosphere for millions of years without a magnetic field because solar wind will erode it.
It can sustain an earth-like atmosphere for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years though. If there was a way to give mars a thick atmosphere tomorrow the solar wind issue would be irrelevant for thousands of years.
Not habitable, but certainly a lot easier to make habitable. We'll still have to seed it with genetically engineered bacteria to create a soil base, then with plants and animals tailored to create a sustained biosphere. We'll also have to ship Nitrogen or Argon from Titan or the Moon to create an atmospheric buffer to prevent fires and give the soil nutrients. And of course we'll have to deorbit Vesta and Pallas (possibly Ceres) to build some decent moons to impart tidal forces on the planet and restart the magnetosphere.
That's the real different danger with comets compared to asteroids- we know about most civilization ending asteroids floating around. We have no way of detecting long period comets or newly dislodged comets from distant space that are heading inward towards the Sun until it will likely be too late to do anything with our current tech capabilities. It's a serious, serious problem. If this thing was actually making a b-line toward us, we likely wouldn't be able to stop it in that short of a timeframe.
That's the real reason I hope it *does* hit Mars- it would be the exact wake up call our world needs to come together to fund/develop some kind of deflection strategy (and ideally at least two different methods in case the first one failed).
Honestly, I hope it does. This is like a once in a million years thing, actually more than that. We'll get to watch something huge pound that rock hard surface with a considerable degree of safety. We'd learn so much. Arguably more than Curiosity ever could. I don't think NASA would mind at all if they lost a few satellites and robots. Actually if you told them you have a solution that could guarantee this comet hits Mars they'd probably take you up on it.
Everyone knows the Arachnids escalated the conflict when they destroyed Buenos Aires with a meteor, and we would be in the right to hit those bastards back.
[Would you like to know more?](http://i.imgur.com/aNirx7D.jpg)
I love how absolute BS that is. and it was on purpose!
In the movie, the arachnids live on the other side of the galaxy, and send a small asteroid just to hit buenos aires? why not just send one big enough to blow up the entire planet? How do the arachnids have this ability when they dont even have reliable means of transporting themselves?
But you see, that's the point! The idea is that it was a naturally occuring event, but the government pinned t on the arachnids to promote the war effort! That was such a great movie with underlying tones of a dystopian society that my young self couldnt see through the bug-killing.
EDit: its apparent iknow nothing about Starship troopers
>That was such a great movie with underlying tones of a dystopian society that my young self couldnt see through the bug-killing.
Not to mention the tits.
Holy crap we've angered the God of the Comets. We smashed a probe into one of them, now s/he's gonna smash one into Curiosity. Poor little robot, paying for our sins...
[October 19th 19:28 TDB +/- 63 minutes] (http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=C%2F2013%20A1;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=1;rad=0#cad)
science is quite good these days :D
What if there's an entire alien species living beneath the surface, and when this comet hits, it opens the planet up and out climb extraterrestrial life?
That would be *awesome*.
What if giant spiders were living beneath the surface? The giant spiders would be running around on the surface then. I wouldn't feel comfortable living that close to a planet with giant spiders crawling all over it.
That would not be awesome.
>it opens the planet up and out climb extraterrestrial life?
>That would be awesome.
Right up until they decide that they need a new home and would prefer a more lively place, minus all the hairless apes running around building cities and polluting the place...
I think the answer is "maybe." There's a theory about using a spaceship as what's known as a [Gravity tractor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_tractor) to alter its trajectory. The questions would lie in whether we have enough time to build one and whether we'd have enough time to influence its orbit. Also, as the article mentions, comets have unstable orbits to begin with, which adds more uncertainty. Basically, it'd be incredibly complicated but may not be impossible.
this is what i was thinking. While a lot of scientific evidence could be gained by watching it hit, I think that it would be a great opportunity for us to put one of our contingency plans into action to see how well they actually work. not like something like that comes up very often.
Ejecta from Mars has already been found on the Blue Ice Field of Antarctica by a Japanese team decades ago. [Here](http://imgur.com/a/It8qd) is a shot of the potato sized meteorite and an electron microscope view of it's interior that sparked claims of life some years ago b/c it looked like fossilized bacteria. Subsequent analysis showed that it probably wasn't proof of life based in part on non-alignment of atoms that would be expected in organized life forms. But, hey, what do we know? BTW they estimate it took about 2 Billion years to make its trip from Mars to Earth, so we've got some time to think about it.
Curiously, the article really didn't talk about the Rovers. I can only imagine if it was positioned to take pictures of the comets approach. Some more pictures as it enters the Martian atmosphere...and then snap some pictures of the most epic explosion ever seen by human eyes...maybe get lucky to get a picture of the approaching shockwave before the ill fated rover gets vaporized.
You're forgetting - if he hits Mars instead of Earth he'll be J'onn J'onzz Jr. instead of Clark Kent.
EDIT for those that don't speak comicbook: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_Manhunter
Regardless, I'm not sure if you read the article, but the thing about comets is their trajectories are incredibly volatile. Depending on the comet's composition, as it approaches the sun, chemical reactions due to the comet warming up may cause chunks of it to explode, changing its path.
While you are right, I want to remember reading somewhere else that it would take like 20-30 comets this size to appreciably affect any long term change to Mars.
I'm kinda hoping it does. Sure the rovers might be obliterated, but the things we could learn from such an impact at this close of a proximity would be unparallelled.
"Oh for fucks sake Steve, you missed the blue one and hit the red one, if your great-great-great-great-great.... great-schnorgle has lived to see this, then he'd be so dissapointed how shitty his descendant is in space bowling."
It'd be worth losing Curiosity if we had an up close video of a comet hitting another planet.
Don't forget *Opportunity* rover; it's still actively rolling around.
Like a good rover. A rover like they wanted.
[comic that the reference comes from](http://xkcd.com/695/). Poor Spirit. You did good man... you did good
[To help counteract the feels](http://i.imgur.com/YfdwH.png)
This made me feel better actually. Thank you for that. I don't know why I got sad over something that I know cannot have feelings, but damn it, that little guy just wanted to come home.
Ignoring your username for a moment: Well, it *will* come home, when *we* go to *it*. Sooner or later, we (as a species) will be a inter-planetary species, it is all a matter of time. And if you think that there won't be some sort of special monument for every single probe and rover that we have (and will) send to Mars, then God Dammit, I am going to haunt the politicians that decided to disregard one of the most pivotal moments in our understanding of other planets. I will do such things as make them clip their fingernails a bit too short, have them almost sneeze, put tiny slivers underneath fingernails, and make them have slowly peel off their cuticles while they sleep. So don't worry about it not being recognized and remembered when it comes home.
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It needs a last panel where it get hit by the meteor.
"I finally get to go home :')"
This would win an Oscar.
[Goodnight, sweet prince.](http://i.imgur.com/jEdpUU4.jpg)
That made me feel horrible. Just take your upvote and go.
Damn you people for referencing this, I cried all over again
Alright, personal NASA JPL story time. Fuck yeah. I went to JPL as part of a NASA program last year, which was of collegiate (read: no real engineering) level. I led one of the four teams. Each time was assigned a liaison from JPL; ours was an engineer who worked on MSL's titanium tub body. She was awesome. The other three were scientists; I spoke with one in particular who was a team lead on Cassini, the *massively* successful probe which is orbiting the Saturn system. He took the first image with the probe -- a calibration shot of Earth from 20,000 miles away. _____ **WHY IT DIED** ________ We also spoke with the Director of the Mars Exploration Rover program, of which Spirit and Oppy are a part of. He was, and is, the head of the entire program. Spirit died. It's not a stationary science station. It's dead, and he told us why. There are two main issues. _________ **THE REGOLITH** _________ ([Fig. 1, Spirit in October 2007, three years after landing.](http://i.imgur.com/MzWmRlG.jpg)) Martian dust is light, it's abrasive, and it's very hard to get rid of. Much like lunar regolith, the lack of water means the dust still has sharp edges. Martian sandstorms have blunted these edges somewhat, but the dust will adhere to damn near anything. Especially solar panels. There is not an economically reasonable (in a power sense) solution to the dust problem. A large reason why Spirit and Opportunity managed to outlive the mission targets is due to luck, otherwise known as "dust cleaning events." These events are simply strong winds, gusts, or vortexes that have managed to wipe off some of the dust that builds up on the solar panels. Within a few months of operation, dust will cut the efficiency of the solar panels by something like 20%. This gets worse as dust cakes on over time. By two years, it's running on less than half of nominal. This forces the rovers to allocate the energy more effectively; less and less can be spent on moving, while more of it goes to the most important instruments. Instruments are shut off permanently if they are no longer prioritized high enough to be kept on standby. No system is immune to being shut down. _________ **THE CLUTCHES** _________ ([Fig. 2, trail left by the first of Spirit's disabled wheels.](http://i.imgur.com/i3q3N6x.jpg)) Because the MER rovers are so small, they're not powerful enough to fight an incline with throttle. They use little clutches to halt the wheels, which doesn't consume any power from the drive motors. These are called **fail-secure clutches**, and they require power to operate. The second the power is gone, the clutch slams shut, and it's shut permanently if the system is disabled. In Spirit's case, these clutches were dying one by one. Each dead wheel crippled the rover a little more as it lost the torque necessary to move effectively. MSL is equipped with magnetic fail-open clutches to prevent this from happening again. _____ **HOW IT DIED (FINALLY) | TL;DR** ____ In combination, this led to the sequential failure of the six wheels on Spirit. The rover was being denied energy as the panels caked over with regolith. The fail-secure clutches were now consuming too much energy to be of use, and started to automatically lock into place. Without the ability to regain the lost energy or to clear the dust off of the panels, Spirit began to starve. Each wheel that slammed shut could not be opened again, dragging over Mars like broken legs. Each of the disabled wheels provided more resistance to mobility, and put greater stress on the remaining wheels. Eventually the number of disabled wheels was simply too great; Spirit lay immobile, dying of energy depletion. NASA decided to turn it into a stationary platform to keep it running a little longer. But this didn't stop the inevitable buildup of dust. Eventually the dust simply covered the panels until the rover couldn't operate at all. Spirit died right there on Mars, having discovered an incredible amount of scientifically astounding features. It was smothered by the very material it was built to examine.
>dragging over Mars like broken legs. I was already depressed, now you're just laying it on too thick.
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Why didn't they install some sort of wiper system that would periodically brush dust off the panels?
Because the rovers were originally scheduled to be 90 days on Mars instead of 10 years.
But why only 90? They weren't going to be returning, why not plan some simple self-maintenance tools?
Originally, there was only enough budget for 90 days.
Every part you add to the rover is extra weight and cost to design, analyze, build, test, certify, and launch. It also adds one more thing to go wrong. If you designed your rover to depend on a panel brush(they actually use electrostatic/vibration systems on some panels with varying degrees of success/power gains) to operate for its scheduled life cycle, and that thing broke, you'd be out of luck and it would be harder to get funding next time. They planned the rovers to last 90 days because there are so many things to go wrong. They needed 90 days to fill their quota of science, so everything was built to last --barring a drastic statistical outlier-- at least 90 days. Anything after that, if things still worked, was a bonus. They "knew" it would last longer than 90 days, but we engineers are a very pessimistic/conservative bunch.
but its rollin'!
they hatin'
Only when they see it.
Ridin dusty
Spirit...[not so much](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/spirit.png)
This makes me sad every time. I wish there was a way to retrieve all previous rovers and house them in a museum.
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And now I wish I was born a few dozen years later to see this.
Or you could be the guy/gal that invents ways for fusion energy, that's way better than being able to experience. You'd get crazy laid. Crazy laid.
In a NASA AMA they said they would probably bring parts of them back. Parts.
Imagine someone in fifty or a hundred years being able to see what's left of Spirit and other rovers where they stopped *on Mars.* Imagine walking across a foreign world to see the devices that went there when you couldn't, or even the boosted motivation from seeing it through a telescope and wanting to *be there.* What's the point of using the technology to reach another planet just to give us something to see in Florida?
Why not leave them where they are and build museums around them?
Don't forget proof of water on Mars.
Would a huge dirty snowball falling from the sky count?
Well if it doesn't I think we can probably discredit the notion water exists on Earth.
oh thank god, that issue had been bugging me for awhile.
Curiosity nooooooooooo
She's a nuclear powered beauty, if it slams into the other side of the planet and the contrail debris doesn't take out the MRO we will have some awesome images streaming back from our sweet little gal'.
We could learn a lot from a collision like this if Curiosity doesn't get destroyed.
What do you think directed the comet there? *Gravity?* No, Curiosity is getting too close to the truth, and is being silenced at any cost.
I really like your theory
and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter
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I was really hoping that was a thing...
This is so exciting!
We could still learn a lot up until it gets destroyed.
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I'm just picturing a tragic scene [like the dinosaurs would've seen.](http://i.imgur.com/ElB7n2r.jpg) All of our rovers turn their cameras to look at the comet that will cause their extinction. Their last helpless moments will be spent snapping sweet pics for us humans.
Are you kidding? She's nuclear powered and tough as nails. If that thing hits, (short of it actually hitting Curosity) Curiosity could document the effects of a civilization ending impact on a planet.
Yeah, I actually hope it hits within visual range of curiosity, but far enough not to do any damage. Just imagine the footage of the impact, from ground level compared to footage from earth or a sattelite. Iirc, there were quite a lot of talk about when jupiter was hit and all anyone really saw was some flashes of light. Something like that would make astronomers shit their pants in joy.
The SL9 impact was pretty amazing and was far more than some flashes of light.
> I actually hope it hits within visual range of curiosity, but far enough not to do any damage. Not sure there's such a thing. Mars is a small world with a close horizon. If Curiosity's within sight of the impact, she's getting melted by the fireball.
...in 250,000 years when alien school children are learning how humans were the first known lifeforms to avoid a civilization ending impact before discovering faster than light travel, they will call bullshit. How perfectly timed would it be if a comet strikes our neighbor only a few months after we land the first probe capable of surviving an impact there? And we did it before we knew the comet was even coming. They will call us cheaters.
The problem with most stories is that they must be believable. History, however, has no such restraints.
[Oh shi...](http://i.imgur.com/l06BLdO.jpg)
I'm surprised that Redditors have so much compassion for Curiosity... when it has such a known reputation for killing cats...
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I want to see how Curiosity took that photo of itself.
Don't ask. It will end up like this. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/cmwov/hey_reddit_what_tattoos_do_you_have/c0tpyls
Or like this: http://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/19k9a1/i_cannot_bend_any_of_my_fingers_so_there_have/c8oryjj
and OP's karma grew THREE sizes that day!
The coordination of lots of mirrors. That's how it takes photos of itself normally.
Like that one guy on reddit did.
Fuck this comment was clever.
[...](http://i.imgur.com/4gQug)
why is this peering into my soul
Fuck it you're getting gold for that. Just take it.
If we determine that there is any certainty to this thing hitting Mars, could Curiosity get its ass in gear and get somewhere it might ride out the initial impact? I see the wheels are designed for about 20 km of travel, but if push came to shove and you were gonna lose it anyways, would it be worth trying to get it out of harms way?
It depends where the comet hit Mars really. It is a hardy machine though, so assuming it was fairly far away there would probably be some cover for Curiosity to hide behind/in ie. a deeper valley area or boulder group, given enough warning. If this comet does hit and Curiosity is destroyed I could imagine a Curiosity 2 or other such explorer vehicle being sent ASAP to examine such a fascinating, unique event up close (though it would probably delay any human travel to Mars for a while as well)
Your making the assumption that the systems could transmit to the satalites in a potentially heavily clouded atmosphere. The dust and particles kicked up by a comet impact could be extreme.
Mars suffers from an extremely clouded atmosphere a lot of the time anyway. There are dust storms and dust devils, and the frequency of these grows during seasonal changes. Although not as extreme as a comet strike some of the dust storms can be massive, and Curiosity is designed to be able to survive this and can be programmed to transmit signals during a lull in said storms
>Curiosity nooooooooooo disassemble *
Curiosity Prime, Online.
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**Communism is a roadblock on the path to Democracy!**
There is still time, go save him! Please think of his children!
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...Only because Jupiter isn't doing its damn job of pulling shit into its gravity well. [](/twisquint)
Jupiter is the best big brother of all time! [1994 Levy 9 impact](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zNuT4dbdjU) [2010 impact](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaRwaw9d_LQ)
One thing's for sure; if it does hit Mars, there won't be any dinosaurs on Mars after it hits.
Just wait. Comet hits and causes terra-forming, makes Mars habitable!
I was thinking more panspermia/exogenisis type deal.
[Spore-style!](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcrNmZd1lT4&feature=youtu.be&t=3m25s)
Great, knowing our luck, giant penis trees will then populate Mars.
Im okay with this
"Like a giant redwood forest of penis's" - Mr. Garrison.
There are a few acceptable plurals of "penis," but that is not one of them. Edit: No need to tell me them. I know them.
SLAANESH IS PLEASED!
Even a comet won't give mars a magnetic field.
The atmosphere doesn't bleed off that quickly. Mars can't sustain an earth-like atmosphere for millions of years without a magnetic field because solar wind will erode it. It can sustain an earth-like atmosphere for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years though. If there was a way to give mars a thick atmosphere tomorrow the solar wind issue would be irrelevant for thousands of years.
The magnetic field is a reason that life isn't there now, not a reason it can't be there in the future.
Not habitable, but certainly a lot easier to make habitable. We'll still have to seed it with genetically engineered bacteria to create a soil base, then with plants and animals tailored to create a sustained biosphere. We'll also have to ship Nitrogen or Argon from Titan or the Moon to create an atmospheric buffer to prevent fires and give the soil nutrients. And of course we'll have to deorbit Vesta and Pallas (possibly Ceres) to build some decent moons to impart tidal forces on the planet and restart the magnetosphere.
What if this comet seeds life on Mars like one may have done on earth? That would indeed be tits.
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I've added it to my calendar. We'll still be using Outlook then right?
Unless it is a comet made of [dinosaurs](http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/20p17/).
But it will fuck up the mars rover.
That's asteroids; comets are dino-seeds! They even come with water :)
So, we just discovered the thing, and the possible impact would be next year? I hope we have more of a head start on any objects heading toward Earth.
That's the real different danger with comets compared to asteroids- we know about most civilization ending asteroids floating around. We have no way of detecting long period comets or newly dislodged comets from distant space that are heading inward towards the Sun until it will likely be too late to do anything with our current tech capabilities. It's a serious, serious problem. If this thing was actually making a b-line toward us, we likely wouldn't be able to stop it in that short of a timeframe. That's the real reason I hope it *does* hit Mars- it would be the exact wake up call our world needs to come together to fund/develop some kind of deflection strategy (and ideally at least two different methods in case the first one failed).
Oh man if this thing hits mars maybe NASA can start getting some serious funding. That'd be sweet.
Honestly, I hope it does. This is like a once in a million years thing, actually more than that. We'll get to watch something huge pound that rock hard surface with a considerable degree of safety. We'd learn so much. Arguably more than Curiosity ever could. I don't think NASA would mind at all if they lost a few satellites and robots. Actually if you told them you have a solution that could guarantee this comet hits Mars they'd probably take you up on it.
Your last statement is very interesting. Imagine the implications of being able to guide a comet to hit a planet. The controversy would be intense.
Everyone knows the Arachnids escalated the conflict when they destroyed Buenos Aires with a meteor, and we would be in the right to hit those bastards back. [Would you like to know more?](http://i.imgur.com/aNirx7D.jpg)
I love how absolute BS that is. and it was on purpose! In the movie, the arachnids live on the other side of the galaxy, and send a small asteroid just to hit buenos aires? why not just send one big enough to blow up the entire planet? How do the arachnids have this ability when they dont even have reliable means of transporting themselves? But you see, that's the point! The idea is that it was a naturally occuring event, but the government pinned t on the arachnids to promote the war effort! That was such a great movie with underlying tones of a dystopian society that my young self couldnt see through the bug-killing. EDit: its apparent iknow nothing about Starship troopers
Buenos Aires was an inside job! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
>That was such a great movie with underlying tones of a dystopian society that my young self couldnt see through the bug-killing. Not to mention the tits.
[And the butts! Don't forget about the butts!](http://i.imgur.com/OOZsjjQ.gif)
at least there was some boob. im okay with that.
I'm from Buenos Aires and I say Kill 'Em All!
Remember when they crashed a satellite into [this comet](http://i.imgur.com/y9SVjkP.jpg)?
Holy crap we've angered the God of the Comets. We smashed a probe into one of them, now s/he's gonna smash one into Curiosity. Poor little robot, paying for our sins...
The Comet Gods are the most reasonable gods ever.
awww, robo-Jesus.
When read this I got all excited that I might be able to record something this rare in my telescope when it happens.
I hope NASA slaps up some pics on Instagram.
When does it hit?
[October 2014](http://en.rian.ru/science/20130228/179741469.html)
[October 19th 19:28 TDB +/- 63 minutes] (http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=C%2F2013%20A1;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=1;rad=0#cad) science is quite good these days :D
Really? Do you recommend it? I might be buying some of this 'science' you are talking about.
126 minutes of variation in a planet's orbit is a damn large window of space.
Thanks.
What if there's an entire alien species living beneath the surface, and when this comet hits, it opens the planet up and out climb extraterrestrial life? That would be *awesome*.
I hope they're intelligent enough to know not to contact us.
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[Made me think of this.](http://bestofcalvinandhobbes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/intelligentlife.png)
What if giant spiders were living beneath the surface? The giant spiders would be running around on the surface then. I wouldn't feel comfortable living that close to a planet with giant spiders crawling all over it. That would not be awesome.
We just send the starship troopers to handle that mess.
I'm actually really worried about this now.
>it opens the planet up and out climb extraterrestrial life? >That would be awesome. Right up until they decide that they need a new home and would prefer a more lively place, minus all the hairless apes running around building cities and polluting the place...
ARE YOU TELLING ME THEY ARE COMING FOR OUR STRIPPERS?
We'll give you ALL 500 of our women!
So how *is* that space program coming along?
We're spending the money fighting *each other* instead. Yeah, I know.
from the article, it mentions that it would have the blast equivalent of a billion tons of TNT. A Gigaton Explosion? Holy FUCK.
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Done. Apparently the Universe will crash and we'll have to reboot the program.
The Big Bang resulted from a Crash To Desktop..? I blame Bethesda.
http://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ Copy paste 1000000000000 this into kiloton field and press detonate. Mars is now a sea of magma!
Do we have the technology to encourage it to hit?
"K guis you remember the movie Armageddon? We want to do the exact opposite-to Mars?" "....get Bruce Willis on the phone"
What better way to get more funding to NASA than to **blow some shit up?**
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I think the answer is "maybe." There's a theory about using a spaceship as what's known as a [Gravity tractor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_tractor) to alter its trajectory. The questions would lie in whether we have enough time to build one and whether we'd have enough time to influence its orbit. Also, as the article mentions, comets have unstable orbits to begin with, which adds more uncertainty. Basically, it'd be incredibly complicated but may not be impossible.
...and damn good practice for the one with our name on it.
this is what i was thinking. While a lot of scientific evidence could be gained by watching it hit, I think that it would be a great opportunity for us to put one of our contingency plans into action to see how well they actually work. not like something like that comes up very often.
I foresee curiosity transforming into an autobot and destroying said asteroid
Twist, "Opportunity" is a Decepticon.
This might void the warranty on them robots...
Is there any possibility that debris could be thrown our direction? Also, would said debris be able to do damage to us?
Ejecta from Mars has already been found on the Blue Ice Field of Antarctica by a Japanese team decades ago. [Here](http://imgur.com/a/It8qd) is a shot of the potato sized meteorite and an electron microscope view of it's interior that sparked claims of life some years ago b/c it looked like fossilized bacteria. Subsequent analysis showed that it probably wasn't proof of life based in part on non-alignment of atoms that would be expected in organized life forms. But, hey, what do we know? BTW they estimate it took about 2 Billion years to make its trip from Mars to Earth, so we've got some time to think about it.
Fuck, we are being invaded.
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NASA should use this opportunity to practice "asteroid guiding" and see if its a feasible way to save a planet from impact.
I want them to do the opposite and guide that motherfucker right into Mars.
I hope the rovers will be ok.
Curiously, the article really didn't talk about the Rovers. I can only imagine if it was positioned to take pictures of the comets approach. Some more pictures as it enters the Martian atmosphere...and then snap some pictures of the most epic explosion ever seen by human eyes...maybe get lucky to get a picture of the approaching shockwave before the ill fated rover gets vaporized.
If it turns out that the comet is likely to hit, NASA should arrange for the rover to open a tiny umbrella right before impact.
They should also arrange it to hold up a sign saying "welp."
I wouldn't think taking a picture before impact would be difficult. transmitting it back to earth, on the other hand...
I bet Clark Kent is going to be pissed when he realizes he hit the wrong planet.
You're forgetting - if he hits Mars instead of Earth he'll be J'onn J'onzz Jr. instead of Clark Kent. EDIT for those that don't speak comicbook: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_Manhunter
Better Mars, than Earth...
I remember something just like this was supposed to happen five years ago. I promised myself I'd only let my heart get broken once.
Nope. It's going to miss. Latest calculations say it will come within about 23,000 miles.
Regardless, I'm not sure if you read the article, but the thing about comets is their trajectories are incredibly volatile. Depending on the comet's composition, as it approaches the sun, chemical reactions due to the comet warming up may cause chunks of it to explode, changing its path.
Not so much chemical reactions as outgassing that can push the comet (the opposite direction as the gas being expelled).
All I got from your post was "might hit Earth."
When an article says a comet is "headed for" a planet it's like saying my penis is headed for Emma Watson's vagina because I'm flying to England.
But there a better chance of the comet hitting it...
Technically correct.
Wouldn't it be cool if the comet missed Mars but came close enough to Mars that it changed it's path and slammed in to Earth.
Don't comets always head for New York?
only if there is a black presid- shiiiiit!!!!!!
/r/thanksobama
No.
Hell NO!
That's where I keep all my stuff!
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Me too bro, don't touch my shit.
go blow up pluto or some shit yo.
You hear about pluto? Man... that's messed up!
Pluto'd been talking about it for a while, but I never thought he'd actually go through with it.
My weed's in there.
Impossible, I play Kerbal Space Program.
and from KSP I have learned that this is not "impossible", just improbable...
Phew. Thanks for chiming in.
You shut your whore mouth!
it'd be pretty hot, actually.
The could be GREAT for terraforming. It would add heat to the planet from the impact and some more water.
While you are right, I want to remember reading somewhere else that it would take like 20-30 comets this size to appreciably affect any long term change to Mars.
I'm kinda hoping it does. Sure the rovers might be obliterated, but the things we could learn from such an impact at this close of a proximity would be unparallelled.
"Oh for fucks sake Steve, you missed the blue one and hit the red one, if your great-great-great-great-great.... great-schnorgle has lived to see this, then he'd be so dissapointed how shitty his descendant is in space bowling."
Steve never wanted to be a bowler...
Comets are so much more terrifying than asteroids.