Overview

• The plan calls for a precise engine burn on September 9, 2025, to execute a gravity-assisted Jupiter Oberth maneuver that would intercept 3I/ATLAS on March 16, 2026.
• The maneuver would use about 110 kilograms of Juno’s remaining propellant, accounting for roughly 5.4% of its original fuel reserve.
• Juno’s instruments, including a near-infrared spectrometer, magnetometer, microwave radiometer and cameras, could analyze the comet’s icy nucleus and outgassing material directly.
• Observations by ground-based telescopes and space observatories have confirmed that 3I/ATLAS is a naturally outgassing comet with no risk to Earth, never approaching closer than 1.6 astronomical units.
• While Avi Loeb has floated an alien-probe hypothesis as a pedagogical thought experiment, mainstream astronomers maintain that 3I/ATLAS’s trajectory and composition point to a natural origin.