Feb 28, 2011: Two Moons? Really?

Received this ad from Earth Online Locations in my email today:

On February 28, 2011 there Will Be A Planetary Event That Will NOT Occur Again In Our Lifetimes. Mars will pull closely into our orbit and our sky will appear to have two moons.

Really?

This is worth fact-checking. The majority of searchers fail to check facts. In most cases it's a very simple second search: you find some information and want to check it out. You already have the keywords you need to check, so coming up with a query isn't a problem. NOT doing it is the problem.

I queried this using Google: february 28, 2011 mars orbit 


The closest result is about venus' orbit. Nothing in the first page of results even close to this claim.

I was pretty sure something must have been written about this phenomenon, so tried a couple of query variations:

february 28, 2011 mars earth orbit  (still nothing relevant to the claim)
february 28, 2011 mars orbit two moons  Aha! the following return is close:

http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/will-mars-appear-as-large-as-a-full-moon-in-august-2010

This one refutes a similar claim made about August 27, 2010.

Elapsed time: less than two minutes.

Money saved:  $25-$50