First photo's of Ison taken from Mars

At last NASA has released the first photo's of Ison taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter!
Using the HiRISE camera NASA's MRO took four photo's of Ison from a distance of 13.8 million km (8.5 million miles) on the 29th of September as Ison made her approach to Mars. The photo below is an enlarged image of one of the photo's, the first of Ison taken by MRO while orbiting Mars. The grainy image shows Ison as the blob of light in the centre.

Ison image taken by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

Alan Delamere and Alfred McEwen, HiRISE researchers gave the follow statement in a press release:
HiRISE researchers Alan Delamere and Alfred McEwen explained in a news release:

Based on preliminary analysis of the data, the comet appears to be at the low end of the range of brightness predictions for the observation. As a result, the image isn’t visually pleasing but low coma activity is best for constraining the size of the nucleus. This image has a scale of approximately 8 miles (13.3 km) per pixel, larger than the comet, but the size of the nucleus can be estimated based on the typical brightness of other comet nuclei. The comet, like Mars, is currently 241 million kilometers from the Sun. As the comet gets closer to the sun, its brightness will increase to Earth-based observers and the comet may also become intrinsically brighter as the stronger sunlight volatilizes the comet’s ices.

Ison image's taken by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera 29/09/2013 (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

NASA's MRO using it's HiRISE camera is thought to have captured more images as Ison reached it's closest point with Mars yesterday, hopefully they will be releasing these images soon. Unfortunately NASA has been caught up in the US government shutdown, so we are unable to predict when we will get to see them. We hope this situation is sorted out quickly, but until then these images have really wetted our appetite for the picture's to come!

NASA mission's still operating.......for now.

Yesterday was the day we had all be waiting for, the day Ison made it's closest approach to Mars. With 16 NASA craft pointing at Ison we were expecting some of the most in depth comet data ever to come streaming in, along with the possibility of the first ever image of a comet from another planet, supplied by the Mars Curiosity Rover!

Unfortunately for reasons we don't quite understand, the U.S government has gone in to shutdown, which in turn has affected NASA. Just as we were expecting the data to come streaming in, NASA went offline.
Anyone visiting NASA's home page will be greeted with the following page.....

The message shown on NASA's Homepage

But don't worry, NASA has not completely shutdown, all Mars missions are still operating!
Our source tell us that all missions that are operated  by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Applied Physics Laboratory are still running. These missions include Curiosity, Opportunity, Odyssey, MRO, Cassini, Dawn, Juno, Spitzer, Wise Messenger, New Horizons, the Deep Space Network and all Voyager missions.

JPL is not part of NASA, they are run by the California Institute of Technology, while APL is part of the Johns Hopkins University. Although the organisations will not receive any money from NASA, both have enough funds to keep the missions operating for the time being. JPL and APL have cut all non-essential services in an effort to keep the missions running, but admit that they will be reviewing the situation on a weekly basis.

While it is great news that the missions are still operating, at least for now, there is of course a knock-on effect for the mission updates. NASA requires both JPL and APL to submit all press release's to them so NASA headquarters can review them before publication, as NASA is directly affected by the US government shutdown this will not be happening.
We hope this problem can be sorted out quickly and we will keep you update on any developments as soon as we hear.