First Martian shooting star traced to comet

The first meteor ever seen on Mars has been traced to a trail left by comet Wiseman-Skiff, a wanderer of the solar system that takes six-and-a-half years to orbit the sun, French astronomers said.

The meteor was recorded as a long streak against the inky Martian sky on March seven, 2004 by the panoramic camera of Spirit, the US Mars exploration Rover.

Writing on Thursday, in the British science journal Nature, the team suggests the grazing trajectory of the streak shows it was caused by debris deposited in past years by Wiseman-Skiff.

Comets are believed to be masses of primitive rocks and dust, held together by ice, that are doomed to swing around the sun. As they get closer to the sun, some of the icy layers are stripped away, leaving a gassy wake that is reflected in the sun and, to star-gazers, looks like a tail. When this debris crosses the path of an atmospheric planet, it expires as meteors, burning up through friction. If the pieces are big enough to survive the burn, the remains are called meteorites.