Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

On patrol – NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
Image credit: NASA/JPL

Close-in observations by Mars orbiters are on tap as that interstellar comet –3I/ATLAS — zips by the Red Planet on October 3rd.

One of those spacecraft to view the object is NASA/s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and its powerful camera system, the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE).

“MRO/HiRISE will attempt a couple of images,” reports Alfred McEwen, PI emeritus of HiRISE at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Details

3I/ATLAS as captured August 27 by the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini South at Cerro Pachón in Chile.
Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Shadow the Scientist. Image Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)

“Note that we cannot achieve a high signal/noise ratio needed to detect faint stuff like the distal coma and tail, and we will not resolve the nucleus,” McEwen told Inside Outer Space.

That said, what 31/ATLAS truly is will surely benefit by the collective observations of Mars-orbiting spacecraft…or add to the mystery of its composition.