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17 January – NASA announces that the Kepler space observatory has developed a reaction wheel issue

2 January A study by Caltech astronomers reports that the Milky Way Galaxy contains at least one planet per sta

3 January

8 January

20 January – Scientists prove that quadruple-helix DNA is present in human cells

25 January

An international team of scientists develops a functional light-based "tractor beam", which allows individual cells to be selected and moved at will. The invention could have broad applications in medicine and microbiology

30 January – South Korea conducts its first successful orbital launch

6 February

Astronomers report that 6% of all dwarf stars – the most common stars in the known universe – may host Earthlike planets

Scientists discover live bacteria in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Whillans

American scientists finish drilling down to the subglacial Lake Whillans, which is buried around 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) under the Antarctic ice

10 February NASA's Curiosity Mars rover uses its onboard drill to obtain the first deep rock sample ever retrieved from the surface of another plane

15 February A 10-ton meteoroid impacts in Chelyabinsk, Russia, producing a powerful shockwave and injuring over 1,000 people

28 February

Astronomers make the first direct observation of a protoplanet forming in a disk of gas and dust around a distant sta

A third radiation belt is discovered around the Eart

1 March – Boston Dynamics demonstrates an updated version of its BigDog military robot

3 March – American scientists report that they have cured HIV in an infant by giving the child a course of antiretroviral drugs very early in its life. The previously HIV-positive child has reportedly exhibited no HIV symptoms since its treatment, despite having no further medication for a year

researchers replace 75 percent of an injured patient's skull with a precision 3D-printed polymer replacement implant. In future, damaged bones may routinely be replaced with custom-manufactured implants

7 March

A study concludes that heart disease was common among ancient mummies

11 March

12 March NASA's Curiosity rover finds evidence that conditions on Mars were once suitable for microbial life after analyzing the first drilled sample of Martian rock, "John Klein" rock at Yellowknife Bay in Gale Crater. The rover detected water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, chloromethane and dichloromethane. Related tests found results consistent with the presence of smectite clay minerals

14 March CERN scientists confirm, with a very high degree of certainty, that a new particle identified by the Large Hadron Collider in July 2012 is the long-sought Higgs boson

18 March

NASA reports evidence from the Curiosity rover on Mars of mineral hydration, likely hydrated calcium sulfate, in several rock samples, including the broken fragments of "Tintina" rock and "Sutton Inlier" rock as well as in the veins and nodules in other rocks like "Knorr" rock and "Wernicke" rock.[177] Analysis using the rover's DAN instrument provided evidence of subsurface water, amounting to as much as 4% water content, down to a depth of 60 cm

27 March – A potential new weight loss method is discovered, after a 20% weight reduction was achieved in mice simply by having their gut microbes altered.

NASA scientists report that hints of dark matter may have been detected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station

3 April

15 April A functional lab-grown kidney is successfully transplanted into a live rat in Massachusetts General Hospital

18 April – NASA announces the discovery of three new Earthlike exoplanets – Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f, and Kepler-69c – in the habitable zones of their respective host stars, Kepler-62 and Kepler-69. The new exoplanets, which are considered prime candidates for possessing liquid water and thus potentially life, were identified using the Kepler spacecraft

21 April The Antares rocket, a commercial launch vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation, successfully conducts its maiden flight

After years of unpowered glide tests, Scaled Composites' SpaceShipTwo hybrid spaceplane successfully conducts its first rocket-powered fligh

29 April

1 May IBM scientists release A Boy and His Atom, the smallest stop-motion animation ever created, made by manipulating individual carbon monoxide molecules with a scanning tunnelling microscope

A new study finds that children whose parents suck on their pacifiers have fewer allergies later in life

NASA reports that a reaction wheel on the Kepler space observatory may be malfunctioning and may result in the premature termination of the observatory's search for Earth-like

15 May

16 May Water dating back 2.6 billion years, by far the oldest ever found, is discovered in a Canadian mine

27 May Four-hundred-year-old bryophyte specimens left behind by retreating glaciers in Canada are brought back to life in the laboratory

29 May

Russian scientists announce the discovery of mammoth blood and well-preserved muscle tissue from an adult female specimen in Siberia

A new treatment to "reset" the immune system of multiple sclerosis patients is reported to reduce their reactivity to myelin by 50 to 75 percent

4 June

During the Shenzhou 10 mission, Chinese astronauts deliver the country's first public video broadcast from the orbiting Tiangong-1 space laboratory

20 June

China's Shenzhou 10 manned spacecraft returns safely to Earth, having conducted China's longest manned space mission to date

26 June

20 June

20 June

6 July

Scientists report that a wide variety of microbial life exists in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Vostok, which has been buried in ice for around 15 million years. Samples of the lake's water obtained by drilling were found to contain traces of DNA from over 3,000 tiny organisms

15 July

ASA engineers successfully test a rocket engine with a fully 3D-printed injector

19 July

NASA scientists publish the results of a new analysis of the atmosphere of Mars, reporting a lack of methane around the landing site of the Curiosity rover

Earth is photographed from the outer solar system. NASA's Cassini spacecraft releases images of the Earth and Moon taken from the orbit of Saturn

29 July – Astronomers discover the first exoplanet orbiting a brown dwarf, 6,000 light years from Earth

exoplanet

7 January

Astronomers

report that "at least 17 billion" Earth-sized exoplanets are estimated to reside in the Milky Way Galaxy

20 February

NASA reports the discovery of Kepler-37b, the smallest exoplanet yet known, around the size of Earth's Moon

10 June

Scientists report that the earlier claims of an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, a star close to our Solar System, may not be supported by astronomical evidence

25 June – In an unprecedented discovery, astronomers detect three potentially Earthlike exoplanets orbiting a single star in the Gliese 667

11 July For the first time, astronomers determine the true colour of a distant exoplanet. HD 189733 b, a searing-hot gas giant, is said to be a vivid blue colour, most likely due to clouds of silica in its atmosphere

NASA announces that the failing Kepler space observatory may never fully recover. New missions are being considered

15 August

Phase I clinical trials of SAV001 – the first and only preventative HIV vaccine – have been successfully completed with no adverse effects in all patients. Antibody production was greatly boosted after vaccination

3 September

12 September NASA announces that Voyager I has officially left the Solar System, having travelled since 1977

NASA scientists report the Mars Curiosity rover detected "abundant, easily accessible" water (1.5 to 3 weight percent) in soil samples

26 September

In addition, the rover found two principal soil types: a fine-grained mafic type and a locally derived, coarse-grained felsic type

mafic

as associated with hydration of the amorphous phases of the soi

perchlorates, the presence of which may make detection of life-related organic molecules difficult, were found at the Curiosity rover landing site

earlier at the more polar site of the Phoenix lander) suggesting a "global distribution of these salts

Astronomers have created the first cloud map of an exoplanet, Kepler-7b

30 September

8 October The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"

16 October Russian authorities raise a large fragment, 654 kg (1,440 lb) total weight, of the Chelyabinsk meteor, a Near-Earth asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia on 15 February 2013, from the bottom of Chebarkul lake.

Researchers have shown that a fundamental reason for sleep is to clean the brain of toxins. This is achieved by brain cells shrinking to create gaps between neurons, allowing fluid to wash through

17 October

22 October – Astronomers have discovered the 1,000th known exoplanet

4 November - Astronomers report, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy

11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars

5 November – India launches its first Mars probe, Mangalyaan

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has made the first discovery of very high energy neutrinos on Earth which had originated from beyond our Solar System

21 November

1 December – China launches the Chang'e 3 lunar rover mission, with a planned landing on December 16

3 December – The Hubble Space Telescope has found evidence of water in the atmospheres of five distant exoplanets: HD 209458b, XO-1b, WASP-12b, WASP-17b and WASP-19b

9 December NASA scientists report that the planet Mars had a large freshwater lake (which could have been a hospitable environment for microbial life) based on evidence from the Curiosity rover studying Aeolis Palus near Mount Sharp in Gale Crater

12 December NASA announces, based on studies with the Hubble Space Telescope, that water vapor plumes were detected on Europa, moon of Jupiter

14 December – The unmanned Chinese lunar rover Chang'e 3 lands on the Moon, making China the third country to achieve a soft landing there

18 December

nomers have spotted what appears to be the first known "exomoon", located 1,800 light years away

20 December – NASA reports that the Curiosity rover has successfully upgraded, for the third time since landing, its software programs and is now operating with version 11. The new software is expected to provide the rover with better robotic arm and autonomous driving abilities. Due to wheel wear, a need to drive more carefully, over the rough terrain the rover is currently traveling on its way to Mount Sharp, was also reported

Once safely on the surface, the Mars 3 lander opened its four petal-shaped covers to release the 4.5-kg PROP-M rover contained inside… and after 20 seconds of transmission, fell silent

Due to unknown causes, the Mars 3 lander was never heard from or seen again

The set of images

shows what might be hardware from the 1971 Soviet Mars 3 lander, seen in a pair of images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Russian citizen enthusiasts found four features in a five-year-old image from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that resemble four pieces of hardware from the Mars 3 mission: the parachute, heat shield, terminal retrorocket and lander. A follow-up image by the orbiter from last month shows the same features

the largest Russian Internet community about Curiosity.

subscribers did the preliminary search for Mars 3 via crowdsourcing

modeled what Mars 3 hardware pieces should look like in a HiRISE image, and the group carefully searched the many small features in this large image, finding what appear to be viable candidates

Each candidate has a size and shape consistent with the expected hardware, and they are arranged on the surface as expected from the entry, descent and landing sequence

The predicted Mars 3 landing site was at latitude 45 degrees south, longitude 202 degrees east, in Ptolemaeus Crater

HiRISE acquired a large image at this location in November 2007, and promising candidates for the hardware from Mars 3 were found on Dec. 31, 2012

The candidate parachute is the most distinctive feature

an especially bright spot for this region, about 8.2 yards (7.5 meters) in diameter

The parachute would have a diameter of 12 yards (11 meters) if fully spread out over the surface

this set of features and their layout on the ground provide a remarkable match to what is expected from the Mars 3 landing, but alternative explanations for the features cannot be ruled out

NASA's Mars Odyssey

sixth conjunction for

The travels of Earth and Mars around the sun set up this arrangement, called a Mars solar conjunction, about once every 26 months

which has been orbiting Mars since 2001

are not identical to each other. They can differ in exactly how close to directly behind the sun Mars gets, and they can differ in how active the sun is

The Mars solar conjunctions

Both orbiters will continue science observations on a reduced basis compared to usual operations. Both will receive and record data from the rovers.

Odyssey will continue transmissions Earthward throughout April, although engineers anticipate some data dropouts, and the recorded data will be retransmitted later

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will go into a record-only mode on April 4.

anticipates that the orbiter could have about 40 gigabits of data from its own science instruments and about 12 gigabits of data from Curiosity accumulated for sending to Earth around May 1.

Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is approaching its fifth solar conjunction. Its team will send no commands between April 9 and April 26. The rover will continue science activities using a long-term set of commands to be sent beforehand.

Curiosity

can also continue making science observations from the location where it will spend the conjunction period. Curiosity's controllers plan to suspend commanding from April 4 to May 1.

launch

ISRO engineers successfully completed the first of six orbit raising “Midnight Maneuver” burns at 01:17 hrs IST

Nov. 6

The goal is to gradually maneuver MOM – India’s 1st mission to the Red Planet – into a hyperbolic trajectory so that the spacecraft will

eventually arrive at the Mars Sphere of Influence after a 10 month interplanetary cruise

India’s PSLV rocket is not powerful enough to send MOM on a direct flight to Mars

The launch “placed MOM very precisely into an initial elliptical orbit around Earth

ISRO’s engineers devised a

procedure to get the spacecraft to Mars on the least amount of fuel via six “Midnight Maneuver” engine burns over the next several weeks – and at an extremely low cost

engine fires when

is at its closest point in orbit above Earth. This increases the ships velocity and gradually widens the ellipse

raises the apogee of the six resulting elliptical orbits around Earth that eventually injects MOM onto the Trans-Mars trajectory

expected to achieve escape velocity on Dec. 1 and depart Earth’s sphere of influence tangentially to Earth’s orbit to begin the 300 day

voyage

arrives in the vicinity of Mars on September 24, 2014

, NASA’s

MAVEN orbiter remains on target to launch

on Nov. 18 – from Cape Canaveral, Florida

Both MAVEN and MOM’s goal

study the Martian atmosphere , unlock the mysteries of its current atmosphere and determine how, why and when the atmosphere and liquid water was lost

MOM science teams will “work together” to unlock the secrets of Mars atmosphere and climate history

MAVEN arrives about 48 hours ahead of MOM on September 21, 2014.

rendezvous on September 24, 2014

MOM probe

will study the atmosphere and sniff for signals of methane.

Working together, MOM and MAVEN will revolutionize our understanding of Mars atmosphere, dramatic climatic history and potential for habitability

MOM was designed and developed by the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) at a cost of $69 Million and marks India’s maiden foray into interplanetary flight

before reaching Mars, mission navigators must keep the craft

on course

from Earth to Mars through a series of in flight Trajectory Correction Maneuvers (TMSs).

The second TCM was just successfully performed on June 11 by firing the spacecraft’s 22 Newton thrusters for a duration of 16 seconds

TCM-1 was conducted on December 11, 2013 by firing the 22 Newton Thrusters for 40.5 seconds

Two additional TCM firings are planned in August and September 2014.

the probe has flown about 70% of the way to Mars, traveling about 466 million kilometers out of a total of 680 million kilometers (400 million miles) overall, with about 95 days to go.

One way radio signals to Earth take approximately 340 seconds

ISRO reports the spacecraft and its five science instruments are healthy. It is being continuously monitored by the Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) and NASA JPL’s Deep Space Network (DSN). Remove this ad

Although they were developed independently and have different suites of scientific instruments, the MAVEN and MOM science teams will “work together” to unlock the secrets of Mars atmosphere and climate history, MAVEN’s top scientist

MAVEN’s principal Investigator

“We have had some discussions with their science team, and there are some overlapping objectives,”

“At the point where we [MAVEN and MOM] are both in orbit collecting data we do plan to collaborate and work together with the data jointly,”

In 1959, Rhesus monkey Abel and squirrel monkey Baker, both female, were launched for a brief suborbital space flight in the nose cone of Jupiter Missile AM-18. They reached 300 miles altitude, and travelled 1500 miles at speeds over 10,000 mph. Heart rate and sounds, body temperature, blood pressure and radiation were monitored, plus muscle performance by electromyogram. Abel was trained to tap a switch when a red light flashed, to collect data on performance. After the mission, their successful recovery was the first for living beings. The monkeys survived the flight. Afterwards Able died during anesthesia as doctors were about to remove an electrode from under her skin. Baker died of kidney failure in 1984 at age 27.

April 22

plans to land four people on the Red Planet in 2023

permanent human colony on the Red Planet, with new crews arriving every two years thereafter

Human explorers

will doubtless contaminate whatever site is chosen for the settlement

so the organization will try to pick a place unlikely to host indigenous life

localize the pollution

Mars One is working with experts to minimize the risks its colonization effort may pose to potential Red Planet lifeforms

While Mars One hasn't picked a precise location for its settlement yet, the organization is targeting a swath of the Red Planet between 40 and 45 degrees north latitude

Mars One astronauts will not necessarily be scientists

Anyone over the age of 18 is eligible to apply, with the selection committee prizing traits such as intelligence, resourcefulness, determination and psychological stability over academic background

Science is

not the main focus of what we are doing

Crewmembers will take some scientific gear with them

but Mars One officials won't dictate what the experiments should be.

There will of course be a budget for equipment that they want to take for scientific research

Mars One estimates that landing four settlers on Mars in 2023 will cost about $6 billion

plans to pay most of the bills by staging a global reality-TV event, with cameras documenting all phases of the mission from astronaut selection to the colonists' first years on the Red Planet.

The application process extends until Aug. 31. Anyone at least 18 years of age can apply, by submitting to the Mars One website a 1-minute video explaining his or her motivation to become a Red Planet settler. (

application fee, which ranges from $5 to $75 depending on the wealth of the applicant's home country. United States citizens pay $38

reviewers will pick 50 to 100 candidates from each of the 300 regions around the world that Mars One has identified

By 2015, this pool will be whittled down to a total of 28 to 40 candidates, officials said.

core group will be split into groups of four, which will train for their one-way Mars mission for about seven years

. Finally, an audience vote will pick one of these groups to be humanity's first visitors to the Red Planet.

more than 120 countries

United States

17,324

China (10,241) and the United Kingdom (3,581). Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Argentina and India round out the top 10.

Martian day

is about 24 hours, 39 minutes

Mars Clock, by SunlightAndTime, is a 99-cent app that displays Mars time and a host of other Mars time goodies

for your Apple device

Features include local mean solar time for the rover, coordinated Mars time, sunrise and sunset times for the Curiosity landing site (I think this might be the coolest feature), current season, a countdown to landing feature (which is counting up since MSL landed on Mars on August 5th), current Earth time, a distance calculator between the Earth and Mars and radio communications delay estimate.

Receipt

Initial sponsors include Byte Internet (a Dutch Internet/Webhosting provider); Dutch lawfirm VBC Notarissen; Dutch consulting company MeetIn; New-Energy.tv (an independent Dutch web station that focuses on energy and climate); and Dejan SEO (an Australia-based search engine optimization firm). [

Mars One aims to launch a series of robotic missions between 2016 and 2020 that will build a habitable outpost on the Red Planet. The first four astronauts will set foot on Mars in 2023, and more will arrive every two years after that. There are no plans to return these pioneers to Earth.

Mars One estimates that it will cost about $6 billion to put the first four humans on the Red Planet

hopes the "Big Brother"-style reality show will pay most of these costs

televised action is slated to begin in 2013, when Mars One begins the process of selecting its 40-person astronaut corps

ow there’s another suggestion: Crystallizing lava may have contained tiny pockets where water could react with other chemicals to make small amounts of iron- and magnesium-rich clay. No additional water flowing on the surface or belowground would be needed. So early Mars could have been a largely cold, dry world

not saying all clays on Mars formed by this process

“if most clays formed by a magmatic process, it says maybe water wasn’t so available on early Mars

researchers investigated the cooling-lava scenario because some Martian clays don’t appear to fit with previous explanations

Some Martian meteorites contain clay minerals with hydrogen isotope compositions characteristic of water coming from Mars’ mantle and carried in lava — not from the atmosphere or surface — suggesting water-rich lava has produced some Martian clay.

The researchers also looked at clay deposits from French Polynesia’s Mururoa Atoll in the Pacific Ocean that formed from cooling lava

This clay reflects the same wavelengths of infrared light as Martian deposits

suggesting that both have similar mineralogical properties and thus probably formed in the same way.

team says cooling lava can account for the most geographically abundant Noachian clay minerals

that doesn’t mean water didn’t flow on the surface during brief episodes

evidenced by the planet’s ancient river valleys, says coauthor

Ehlmann says scientists need to find a spot on Mars where Noachian-aged clay is found so that all three proposed clay-forming mechanisms can be tested

where NASA’s Curiosity landed is not a good test location because the clays there are slightly younger and are clearly part of a sedimentary

At first

the formations appear similar to so-called Martian "blueberries" — iron-rich spherical formations first seen by Opportunity in 2004 — but they actually differ in several key ways, scientist said

This is one of the most extraordinary pictures from the whole mission

Kirkwood is chock full of a dense accumulation of these small spherical objects. Of course, we immediately thought of the blueberries, but this is something different

never have seen such a dense accumulation of spherules in a rock outcrop on Mars."

The new photo by Opportunity is actually a mosaic of four images taken by a microscope-like imager on its robotic arm

Opportunity is currently exploring a location known as Cape York along the western rim of a giant Martian crater called Endeavour

Despite its advanced age, Opportunity is still pumping out new discoveries after more than eight years on Mars.

first spotted Martian blueberries soon after its landing in 2004

blueberries are actually concretions created by minerals in water that settled into sedimentary rock.

Opportunity has seen Martian blueberries at many of its science site

bumpy, spherical formations on the Kirkwood rock represent something new

. In Opportunity's new photo, many of the strange features are broken, revealing odd concentric circles inside

seem to be crunchy on the outside, and softer in the middle

different in concentration. They are different in structure. They are different in composition. They are different in distribution

science team have several theories, but none that truly stand out as the best explanation

Kirkwood outcrop is just one science pit stop at Cape York for Opportunity. Mission scientists have already picked out another interesting rock outcrop nearby, a pale patch that may contain tantalizing clay minerals, for possibly study after Opportunity completes its current analysis.

spring equinox is approaching on Mars, ensuring increasing levels of sunshine for Opportunity's solar arrays

"Energy production levels are comparable to what they were a full Martian year ago

on Feb. 16, 2012

Amazonis Planitia region of northern Mars

Evidence of many previous whirlwinds, or dust devils, are visible as streaks on the dusty surface shown in the image

like on Earth, winds on Mars are powered by solar heating

Mars is now farthest from the Sun,

though the exposure to the Sun’s rays is now less, even so, the dust devils are moving dust around on Mars’ surface

Dust devils occur on Earth as well as on Mars

spinning columns of air, made visible by the dust they pull off the ground

Unlike a tornado, a dust devil typically forms on a clear day

ground is heated by the sun, warming the air just above the ground

eated air near the surface rises quickly through a small pocket of cooler air above i

the air may begin to rotate, if conditions are just right.

These lighter and heavier forms, or isotopes, of argon exist naturally throughout the solar system

On Mars the ratio of light to heavy argon is skewed because much of that planet's original atmosphere was lost to space

The lighter form of argon was taken away more readily because it rises to the top of the atmosphere more easily and requires less energy to escape

That left the Martian atmosphere relatively enriched in the heavier isotope, argon-38

past analyses by Earth-bound scientists of gas bubbles trapped inside Martian meteorites had already narrowed the Martian argon ratio to between 3.6 and 4.5

Measurements by NASA's Viking landers in the 1970s put the Martian atmospheric ratio in the range of four to seven

The new SAM direct measurement on Mars now pins down the correct argon ratio at 4.2

The Curiosity measurements do not directly measure the current rate of atmospheric escape

NASA's next mission to Mars, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN), is designed to do so

That mission is being prepared

for a launch-opportunity period that begins on Nov. 18

could help lay the foundation for the colonization of Mars,

its designers say

The MPX team

isn't suggesting that the 2020 Mars rover should

digging a hole with its robotic arm and planting seeds in the Red Planet's dirt.

the experiment would be entirely self-contained, eliminating the chance that Earth life could escape and perhaps get a foothold on Mars.

MPX would employ a clear "CubeSat" box

which would be affixed to the exterior of the 2020 rover

This box would hold Earth air and about 200 seeds of Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant that's commonly used in scientific research

The seeds would receive water when the rover touched down on Mars, and would then be allowed to grow for two weeks or so.

MPX would provide an organism-level test

how Earth life deals with the Red Planet's relatively high radiation levels and low gravity, which is about 40 percent as strong as that of Earth,

"It also would be the first multicellular organism to grow, live and die on another planet

interesting possibility of possible interactions of the coma of A1 Siding Spring and the tenuous atmosphere of Mars

researchers considered how active Comet A1 Siding Spring may be at the time of closest approach on October 19th, 2014

Discovered early last year by Robert McNaught from the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia

when it was found that it will pass extremely close to Mars later this year.

with a nominal passage of 138,000 kilometres from Mars. That’s about one third the distance from Earth to the Moon, and 17 times closer than the nearest recorded passage of a comet to the Earth, Comet D/1770 L1 Lexell in 1780.

And although the nucleus will safely pass Mars, the brush with its extended atmosphere might just be detectable by the fleet of spacecraft and rovers in service around Mars

NEOWISE and Hubble are already monitoring the comet for enhanced activity

The Opportunity rover is also still functioning, and Mars Odyssey and ESA’s Mars Express are still in orbit around the Red Planet and sending back data

India’s Mars Orbiter Mission and NASA’s MAVEN orbiter arrive just before the comet.

MAVEN was designed to study the upper atmosphere of Mars, and carries an ion-neutral mass spectrometer (NGIMS) which could yield information on the interaction of the coma with the Martian upper atmosphere and ionosphere.

Proposals for using Earth-based assets for further observations of the comet prior to the event in October are still pending

Amateur observers will be able to follow the approach telescopically

It’s also interesting to consider the potential for interactions of the coma with the surfaces of the moons of Mars as well, though the net amount of water vapor expected to be deposited will not be large

UPDATE: Check out this nifty interactive simulator which includes Comet A1 Siding Springs courtesy of the Solar System Scope