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42m ago

NASA Sets Wednesday Briefing as Mars Data Sharpen 3I/ATLAS’s Path

Mars‑orbiter measurements tightened the comet’s predicted position by about tenfold, demonstrating a new trajectory‑refinement tool for planetary defense.

Image
ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter was repurposed to monitor 3I/ATLAS during in Mars flyby on Oct. 3. The spacecraft performed well, even though it was not designed to perform tasks like this.
Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb is still not giving up hope that 3I/ATLAS could be an alien mothership and says it's too early to call it.
Elements of this image furnished by NASA.

Overview

  • NASA will host a live event at 3 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Nov. 19, to release multi‑mission imagery of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS via NASA+, the agency website, the app, YouTube, and Amazon Prime.
  • The Virtual Telescope Project will stream real‑time views from Manciano, Italy, starting Tuesday, Nov. 18 at 11:15 p.m. ET (Wednesday, 04:15 UTC), offering public telescopic images as the object recedes from the Sun.
  • ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter captured 3I/ATLAS near Mars in early October, reducing trajectory uncertainty by roughly a factor of ten and providing the first planetary‑orbiter astrometry accepted by the Minor Planet Center.
  • 3I/ATLAS poses no threat to Earth, having passed about 19 million miles from Mars in early October and set to make its closest Earth approach on Dec. 19 at roughly 170 million miles.
  • Most researchers report textbook cometary behavior, including a coma, tails, and small non‑gravitational acceleration consistent with outgassing, while a minority calls for further data to probe alternative hypotheses.