Overview
- The object will sweep about 29 million kilometers from Mars on October 3, offering the closest opportunity yet to study an interstellar visitor with Mars orbiters such as MRO’s HiRISE camera.
- NASA officials reject claims of an artificial or extraterrestrial origin, stating the body behaves like a comet and poses no threat to Earth.
- Multiple observatories report an unusually carbon‑dioxide‑rich coma, with TESS detecting early activity and SPHEREx finding water and CO2 mixtures at large distances from the Sun.
- Hubble observations suggest a nucleus roughly 5.6 kilometers across traveling near 209,000 kilometers per hour on a hyperbolic, extrasolar trajectory.
- Modeling led by Matthew Hopkins estimates the comet’s age at around seven billion years, a preliminary result that would make it older than the Sun.