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A supermassive doomsday comet is heading toward the planet in 2014, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. The comet presents a good-news, bad-news situation for the Red Planet, and for us earthlings as well. NASA says Comet 2013 A1, also known as Comet Siding Spring, is almost certain to miss Mars on Oct. 19, 2014. However, there's still a chance — a less than a 1-in-600 chance — that Mars could be hit, due to the remaining uncertainty about the comet's path. That uncertainty is likely to be cleared up over the next few months, eventually resulting in...

A recently discovered comet will make an uncomfortably-close planetary flyby next year — but this time it’s not Earth that’s in the cosmic crosshairs. According to preliminary orbital prediction models, comet C/2013 A1 will buzz Mars on Oct. 19, 2014. According to calculations by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), close approach data suggests the comet is most likely to make a close pass of 0.0007 AU (that’s approximately 63,000 miles from the Martian surface). However, there’s one huge caveat. Due to uncertainties in the observations — the comet has only been observed for 74 days (so far), so it’s difficult...