An Asteroid Hurtles Toward Mars – TIME
According to a report in TIME, there’s a 1/75 chance that an asteroid will impact Mars in late January. That’s obviously not a very large chance (about 1%), but if the small rock does manage to hit the red planet it could well be a spectacle worth watching. Mars is currently as close as it’s going to get to Earth until 2040, so we’ve got front row seats for the event.
update: JPL (NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory) has revised their prediction to give the asteroid a 1-in-25 or 4% chance of hitting Mars in January.
It looks like the results of further observations have ruled out an impact between Mars and an asteroid hurtling in its general direction. While it would certainly have been interesting, in a way I’m glad it’s not going to happen. Depending on the force of the impact and the location it could have had an effect on the Mars rovers which are still doing good science.