Space & Astronomy

Two spacecraft are poised to fly right through the tail of 3I/ATLAS

By T.K. Randall
October 26, 2025 ·  0 comments

Image: Artist's impression of the interstellar asteroid 'Oumuamua
Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, ESO, M. Kornmesser / CC BY 4.0 (adapted) By now, 3I/ATLAS needs little introduction - this curious interstellar interloper, which is currently passing through our solar system, has been at the center of a great deal of debate and speculation for months, with most scientists arguing that it is simply a comet and others - such as Harvard's Prof Avi Loeb - raising the possibility that it is in fact an object controlled by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.

While efforts have been made recently to gather as much data about this intriguing visitor as possible, the best photographs we have are rather indistinct, making it difficult to get a clear image of 3I/ATLAS and clear up the debate over its nature and origin once and for all.

Now, though, a lucky break may have presented itself.

In a new paper, scientists have revealed that two existing space probes - ESA's Hera (which is heading to the binary asteroid Didymos-Dimorphos) and NASA's Europa Clipper (which is heading to Jupiter's icy moon) - will actually be passing 'downwind' of 3I/ATLAS within the next few weeks, giving them an opportunity to detect ions from the object's tail.The trouble is, neither of these spacecraft were designed to analyze comet tails, so adapting their existing missions to accomplish this in such a short time will prove very challenging.

Also, only Europa Clipper has the instrumentation capable of detecting ions in the tail at all.

Whether NASA will want to risk the probe's existing mission for the chance to further investigate 3I/ATLAS, however, remains to be seen.

Given that it continues to get nearer, we may not have too much longer to wait before we can find out for sure if there really is anything strange about this curious interstellar visitor.

As things stand, it will reach its closest approach of the Earth on December 19th.

Source: Live Science | Comments (0)

Tags: Interstellar