Overview
- NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory reports measured non-gravitational acceleration with radial ~135 km/day² and transverse ~60 km/day² components.
- The deviation was detected as 3I/ATLAS approached the Sun at roughly 203 million kilometers from it.
- Scientists at Russia’s Space Research Institute propose that late-October solar plasma ejections may have disrupted the coma and altered outgassing, potentially producing reactive thrust.
- Harvard’s Avi Loeb predicts a prominent gas tail and major mass loss in November–December 2025 if reactive propulsion is responsible, a forecast now under observation.
- Discovered on July 1, 3I/ATLAS is classified as an interstellar comet with a coma about 24 kilometers wide and a modeled age over 7.5 billion years.