The comet Siding Spring caused an intense meteor shower and formed new layers of particles on Mars after its flyby on Oct. 19.
NASA's MAVEN and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and ESA's Express spacecrafts captured the massive amount of debris brought by the comet, which was left in Mars' ionosphere. The Red Planet's ionosphere is an electrically charged region in the atmosphere that reaches from about 75 miles (120 kilometers) to several hundred miles above the Martian surface, according to Science Codex.
Siding Spring came ten times closer to Mars during its flyby on Oct. 19 than ever before, which helped scientists to learn more about the solar system's birth roughly 4.6 billion years ago. Scientists have been tracking the comet since its discovery in 2013.
The dust from the comet spread in Mars' atmosphere resulting in an intense meteor shower. Researchers presume that the event can either cause temporary or permanent changes in the planet's atmosphere. The changes will be monitored by the spacecrafts orbiting the planet, which surprisingly did not suffer from major damage. Researchers initially thought that the collision would damage spacecrafts during the flyby.
"MAVEN is well suited for studying the effects of the dust from the comet in the Martian atmosphere, because it makes measurements at the altitudes where the dust was expected to have an effect," said CU-Boulder professor Bruce Jakosky of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, the principal investigator on the $671 million Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission. "We also should be able to see if there are long-term effects from the comet dust in that same region of the atmosphere."
MAVEN detected high concentrations of magnesium and iron deposited in the Red Planet's atmosphere after the flyby. Particles remained in the atmosphere even after two days. The spacecraft collected samples of the dust and identified eight types of metal ions. Scientists believe that the particles came from the Oort Cloud comet, which is located at the farthest part of the Solar System.
"This historic event allowed us to observe the details of this fast moving Oort Cloud comet in a way never before possible using our existing Mars missions," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at the agency's headquarters in Washington.
The scientists will continue to study the Siding Spring's size, composition and other aspects.
