Mars Comet Encounter Observations, C/2013 A1 Siding Spring, 19 Oct 2014 Options

[jmknapp]

Mars Express with be using the super resolution channel of the high resolution stereo camera to catch any meteor activity from coma particles:

[jmknapp]

According to the USGS blog they'll be trying to image SS on sol 782 as well, the day before closest approach. Here's the viewing situation per http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/generic_...ing_8-19-14.bsp





Looks like the best chance is in the wee hours at range 7-8 million km, about 50x further away than closest approach on sol 783.

[Adam Hurcewicz]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o348MOuu-c


View to Mars, spacecrafts (MRO, Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, MAVEN) rovers (MER-B Opportunity and Curiosity) from comet C/2013 A1

Comet will pass very close to Mars at 18:27:15 UTC (about 135 300 km to planet surface). I have stop for few seconds animation at that time.

At 18:48 UTC Mars will enter path of the comet dust trail
At 20:05 UTC Mars will be at center of the dust trail. Mars Express will try observe meteors on Mars atmosphere

The animation show view from above the comet.

Simple law - comet see the spacecraft = spacecraft see the comet !

About rovers:

Opportunity will see the comet at night to the set comet at morning (18:35 UTC - 10 min after CA)

In the Curiosity sky comet will rise at the daytime and transit at 20:39 UTC (after dusk sky)

This two rovers will have good conditions to see the comet.


Animation are made in Celestia and orbital data are from SPICE/BSP (NAIF/NASA site http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif )

Precision are compared with HORIZONS/JPL ephemerides and ORB files in spk folders.

[jmknapp]

Nice animation--good to see all the players at once, except the Indian orbiter, which doesn't use SPICE, unfortunately.

[Adam Hurcewicz]

Nice animation--good to see all the players at once, except the Indian orbiter, which doesn't use SPICE, unfortunately.

I have MOM orbital data from HORIZONS but I disable it in this animation.

Here is screen shots with position of MOM at 18:27:15 UTC - 19.10.2014

[djellison]

except the Indian orbiter, which doesn't use SPICE, unfortunately.

It does. If you're being talked to by the DSN and JPL is helping with navigation - believe me - there's SPICE involved. It might not be publicly available - but there IS SPICE data.

If you go into HORIZONS Telnet and ping for MOM - you will see this

CODE

Name                                         Start (CT)         Stop (CT)
   ---------------------------------------  -----------------  -----------------
   131105-131109_od003_v1_dsn               2013-Nov-05 09:53  2013-Nov-05 17:01
   131105-131109_od005_v1_dsn               2013-Nov-05 17:01  2013-Nov-06 20:22
   131106-131111_od008_v1_dsn               2013-Nov-06 20:22  2013-Nov-07 21:27
   131107-131111_od011_v1_dsn               2013-Nov-07 21:27  2013-Nov-08 21:16
   131108-131113_od013-newEBN4_v1_dsn       2013-Nov-08 21:16  2013-Nov-09 22:31
   131108-131112_od014_v1_dsn               2013-Nov-09 22:31  2013-Nov-10 00:01
   131110-131113_od017_v1_dsn               2013-Nov-10 00:01  2013-Nov-10 21:29
   131110-131114_od018_v2_dsn               2013-Nov-10 21:29  2013-Nov-12 00:01
   131112-131130_od022_v1_dsn               2013-Nov-12 00:01  2013-Nov-15 20:20
   131115-131211_od032_v1_dsn               2013-Nov-15 20:20  2013-Nov-25 13:01
   131125-140926_od033_v1_dsn               2013-Nov-25 13:01  2013-Nov-30 20:01
   131130-140926_od041_v1_withTCM1_dsn      2013-Nov-30 20:01  2013-Dec-11 09:56
   131211-140926_od090_v1_dsn               2013-Dec-11 09:56  2014-Feb-19 04:01
   140219-140926_od170_v1_dsn               2014-Feb-19 04:01  2014-Apr-15 02:01
   140415-140926_od205_v1_dsn               2014-Apr-15 02:01  2014-Jul-26 22:31
   140726-150925_od222_v1_MOI               2014-Jul-26 22:31  2014-Sep-24 02:15
   140924-141024_od227_v1_dsn               2014-Sep-24 02:15  2014-Sep-27 01:41
   140927-141029_od230_v1_dsn               2014-Sep-27 01:41  2014-Sep-30 03:46
   140930-141125_od232_v1-PHASEMVR_JPL      2014-Sep-30 03:46  2014-Oct-03 22:21
   141003-141107_od235_v1_dsn               2014-Oct-03 22:21  2014-Oct-12 20:16
   141012-141115_od237_v1_dsn               2014-Oct-12 20:16  2014-Nov-15 12:01

That's all filenames of SPICE BSPs

Doug

[jmknapp]

I was going by this from a NAIF newsletter from last year:

ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) will not use SPICE. (Although apparently one or more Indian Remote Sensing earth satellites do use SPICE.)

For ISRO's moon orbiter I found this slide from NAIF

India (ISRO)
– Poor SPICE ops on Chandrayaan-1
» Much good data cobbled together by M**3 team
» No sign of an archive so far

Maybe the files are from another source than ISRO?

[fredk]

I think the new 781 mastcam observations are the first of the SS field. All I could see is a faint trail on one of the frames, in the lower-left quadrant:

The orientation is about right for a star trail at that azimuth/elevation. Considering how faint the comet should still be, this is likely just a star.

[Gerald]

It's probably Pi Eridani, sorry meant Pi Ceti, just outside Eridanus. There may be some more stars hidden in the noise. The pointing is good, but I couldn't identify the comet thus far. I'll try to identify the star(s), and edit this post later with more stars identified, if possible.

Here an excessively processed and tentatively annotated version of the Sol 781 Pi Ceti image:

[djellison]

Maybe the files are from another source than ISRO?

Let me put it another way. The DSN is using SPICE data generated by JPL nav team. We use the exact same SPICE data in Eyes on the Solar System. That same SPICE data is driving anything people get from HORIZONS.

[JohnVV]

i think the issue is that there are no naif ck and spk folders for "mom "
like there is for, say Cassini.
ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/CASSINI/kernels/ck/
ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/CASSINI/kernels/spk/

but the data in horizons is current just in a different form

[djellison]

I know that. But it's still SPICE that's driving HORIZONS. The same SPICE driving 'Eyes..' and telling the DSN where to point.

[Deimos]

Opportunity also imaged Pi Ceti during a test run a few sols ago. In addition to increased extinction, the distant dust storms make for an annoyingly bright twilight. http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/all/1/p/3...YOP2664L1M1.JPG

[nprev]

Haven't seen this posted yet. Emily has a nice summary of real-time telescopic webcasts & other resources in her most recent TPS blog entry.

[Gerald]

There are rather impressive Sol 782 night shots. Here a brightness-stretched and denoised ML image: