"Last month, mysterious interstellar object 3I/ATLAS came within just 18 million miles of Mars during its unusual trajectory through our solar system. During its approach, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter used its HiRISE camera to take high-resolution images of the rare visitor, which is widely suspected among experts to be a comet. But thanks to a bureaucratic nightmare triggered by the ongoing federal government shutdown, which kicked off just days after the images were taken, scientists have yet to see them over a month later."
"Last week, representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) sent a letter to interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy, urging the space agency to release the images, which offer roughly three times the resolution of the object compared to July images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. "This information is of great importance to advancing our understanding of interstellar visitors and their interaction with our solar system," she wrote. "The brightest pixel in these images will provide our most precise constraint on the object's size to date.""
Interstellar object 3I/ATLAS passed 18 million miles from Mars while NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured high-resolution HiRISE images that could refine the object's size and nature. A federal government shutdown began days after imaging and prevented public release, leaving scientists without access for over a month. Representative Anna Paulina Luna requested release, noting HiRISE images have roughly three times Hubble's resolution and that the brightest pixel will constrain the nucleus size. Interim NASA acknowledgement said images will be released only after the government reopens. Separately, China's Tianwen-1 HiRIC publicly released images showing a nucleus and surrounding coma from a much closer distance.
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