Orbiters Study Effect of Giant Comet-Caused Meteor Shower On Mars

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday November 9, 2014 @05:49AM from the sky-is-falling dept.

An anonymous reader writes According to observations made by NASA and ESA orbiters, the extremely close flyby of comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring to Mars was accompanied by a meteor shower larger than any seen on Earth. NASA said that dust from Comet Siding Spring vaporized high up in the Martian atmosphere, producing "an impressive meteor shower." An observer on Mars surface might have seen thousands of shooting stars per hour. "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," Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at the agency's Headquarters in Washington, said in the statement.

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Re:Effects on Martian atmosphere by wierd_w · 2014-11-09 06:03 · Score: 4, Informative

MAVEN detected large spectrometry spikes for several metallic elements, and several non-metallic ones as well, which persisted for hours after the comet passed by.
Hang on, I will dig up a source.
http://www.universetoday.com/1...
Bam. There you go.