Comet Siding Springs’ Distance From Mars

This graph shows Earth and Earth's moon with a blue line in the middle showing Comet Siding Spring and how close it would come to Earth if Mars were Earth.
October 6, 2014
CreditNASA/JPL-Caltech
Language
  • english

If Mars were Earth, comet Siding Spring would pass by at about 1/3 the distance of Earth to the Moon. That’s an extremely close encounter! By contrast, the closest a comet has come to Earth in recorded history was about six times farther out than our Moon. Named comet “Lexell,” it was discovered in 1770, but hasn’t been seen since.

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