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MAVEN snaps eight-bit SPACE INVADER

PewPewPew! Siding Spring shot in glorious retro chunks

Comet Siding springs is proving a tricky subject for photography.

But surely humanity's robot observers can do better than the image below, snapped by the MAVEN orbiter at a distance of about 8.5 million kilometres and depicting the comet as a Space Invader.

Comet Siding Spring from 8.5m kms out

Comet Siding Spring seen from 8.5km. Click to embiggen
Image: NASA/Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics/Univ. of Colorado

The plucky Opportunity rover also managed to record a glimpse of Siding Spring. Here's its effort.

Comet Siding Spring as spotted by Opportunity

Not a smudge on Opportunity's lens, but a view of Comet Siding Spring
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./ASU/TAMU

Space probes don't email home .JPGs: NASA often tells tales of how it assembled the photos it publishes by using data captured by multiple optical instruments. That process often takes a few days, as does the transmission of data from Mars to Earth.

So fret not: better pics of Comet Siding Spring are doubtless in the works. ®

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