NASA's Mars orbiter provides fresh clues for comet 'Sliding Spring'

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has provided data about a comet 'Siding Spring' that buzzed the Red Planet and the concerted campaign of observations may have yielded fresh clues to the solar system's earliest days more than 4 billion years ago.

Three of the other NASA Mars orbiters, two Mars rovers and other assets on Earth and in space have been studying comet Siding Spring.

The orbiter has continued to operate in good health after sheltering behind Mars during the half hour when high-velocity dust particles from comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring had the most chance of reaching the paths of Mars orbiters.

Following the critical period of dust flux, the orbiter has communicated at 1.5 megabits per second with NASA's Deep Space Network. It had remained on Side A of its two redundant computers, and all subsystems were working as expected.

The orbiter's other three instruments have been used to study possible effects of the gas and dust in the comet's tail interacting with the atmosphere of Mars. This comet was making its first visit this close to the Sun from the outer solar system's Oort Cloud.

Objectives of the observing program were to attempt to image the comet nucleus, to study its surrounding coma of dust and gas, and to search for signatures of that material interacting with the Mars atmosphere.