Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on 16 October 2014 repositioned its Mars Orbiter, Mangalyaan as a precautionary step against the expected Comet Siding Spring that would fly by Mars, the red planet on 19 October 2014.
ISRO has positioned its Mars Orbiter to a position farthest from the tail of the Comet so that it does not affect the satellite.
Along with the Indian space Agency, the space agencies’ of other countries around the world those have sent their missions to Mars has also repositioned their satellites like MAVEN, Curiosity, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on the planet, so that the Comet Siding Spring would not collide or affect them by its movement.
Background
US space agency NASA has said that the Comet Siding Spring, C/2013 A1 has travelled many billions of miles and would come within about 87000 miles of Mars on 19 October 2014. The comet comes from the Oort cloud, material left over from the formation of the solar system.
C/2013 A1
C/2013 A1 is a Siding Spring is an Oort cloud comet and was discovered on 3 January 2013 by Robert H. McNaught at Siding Spring Observatory using the 0.5-meter (20 in) Uppsala Southern Schmidt Telescope. At the time of discovery it was 7.2 AU from the Sun and located in the constellation Lepus. Comet C/2013 A1 probably took millions of years to come from the Oort cloud.
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