Comet Siding Spring is making NASA move all of its Mars orbiters to the opposite side of the Red Planet.
Two of the three orbiters are already there and one is set to enter orbit on September 2, according to NASA.
On October 19, Siding Spring's nucleus will miss Mars by just 82,000 miles, but it's not the nucleus that NASA engineers are worried about.
"The hazard is not an impact of the comet nucleus, but the trail of debris coming from it," said Rich Zurek, chief scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA's JPL, according to the space agency.
As the nucleus passes Mars, it will be shedding material moving at around 35 miles per second, relative to the Red Planet and the Mars orbiters. Moving at that speed, a particle just a half a millimeter across could damage a spacecraft.
"Mars is right outside the edge of where the cloud is predicted to be at the time of passage by Mars," said Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator for MAVEN at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder, according to Space.com. "If it does expand a little more and encompass Mars, the predicted abundance of dust grains is thought to be significantly less than what had been expected, and is not likely to be a significant risk to the spacecraft."
All three Mars orbiters will have conducted maneuvers by October 9 that are a part of the repositioning procedure for the comet's flyby, according to NASA.
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbit made its adjustment maneuver on July 2.
The orbiters' instruments will be used to study the flyby, according to NASA. For example, Odyssey will be used to study the spectral and thermal features of the comet and tail.
MAVEN will be used to study gases coming off the comet's nucleus, and the MRO will examine Mars' atmosphere for cloud development and temperature increases. It will observe the comet for two days before and two days after its closest approach, according to NASA.
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