A couple of months ago, various online news magazines and newspapers reported that an asteroid is going to hit Mars. Probability was between 1/45 to 1/75 according to some newspapers. The date when the asteroid should hit Mars is tomorrow, January 30th. Now, is the asteroid going to hit Mars or not?

Because this is a very interesting phenomenon, I have been really waiting to see if the asteroid hits Mars tomorrow. In late December researchers reported that the risk of impact is higher, but soon in early January the risk was lowered. Now when the probability is 2.5%, it looks like the impact is not going to happen. The asteroid WP5 is going to miss Mars by about 30.000 kilometers. That is a pity. A direct impact to Mars would have been a very interesting phenomenon and something worth of observing. Imagine how great chance it would be for the rovers in Mars to study the crater of the impact.

In 2004, fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smacked into Jupiter, creating a series of overlapping fireballs in space. Now there is a chance to see a similar phenomenon, but it looks like that most likely it is not going to happen. WP5 with estimated diameter of 164 feet (50 meters) and travelling 15 times faster than a rifle bullet, would have caused a somehow similar crater as the one that hit northern Arizona 50.000 years ago.

If the asteroid did hit Mars, it could release about 3 megatons of energy and leave a crater about a half-mile (0.8-km) wide. Steve Chesley from Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) estimates that such impacts occur on Mars every thousand years or so. So, let’s wait anoterh 1000 years..

Image source.