NASA Debunks Rumors About Interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas

Authored by T.J.Muscaro via The Epoch Times,

With the federal government shutdown over, NASA leadership was finally able to provide an update to the public about an interstellar object that was caught passing through the solar system in July.

A press conference was livestreamed on Nov. 19, and it began with Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya confirming that the object known as 3I/Atlas was an interstellar comet and nothing else.

“I think it’s important that we talk about [the fact] that this object is a comet,” he said.

”It looks and behaves like a comet, and has and all evidence points to it being a comet. But this one came from outside the solar system, which makes it fascinating, exciting, and scientifically very important.”

The name 3I/Atlas comes from the fact that it is only the third interstellar object (3I) NASA has discovered that originated from outside the solar system, and it was first picked up by the NASA-funded Atlas Survey Telescope located in the mountains of Chile.

Discovered on July 1 by its planetary defense network—which also found it posed no threat to Earth—NASA retasked a large portion of its fleet of interplanetary science spacecraft to track the comet as it made its closest pass to the sun at the end of October.

Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said that 20 mission teams and counting contributed to collecting whatever data they could on the comet, including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Parker Solar Probe, Europa Clipper, and the James Webb Telescope.

The planet 3I/Atlas came closest to was Mars, so NASA also tasked its Perseverance rover on the Martian surface, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the MAVEN spacecraft to take pictures and learn what they could.

That flyby took place at a distance of less than 20 million miles from the Red Planet on Oct. 3, and then the comet proceeded to make its closest approach to the sun while Earth was on the opposite side. Before that, 3I/Atlas was monitored through September by spacecraft sent to study asteroids named Psyche and Lucy.

It takes time for NASA scientists to receive the images and data from deep space, process them, and prepare and make the initial findings ready for publication.

The space agency’s website showed its last update on the comet published on Aug. 25.

A shutdown of the federal government began on Oct. 1, which suspended public relations teams for nearly all government agencies, and did not end until Nov. 12.

Amid NASA’s silence, speculation spread that the so-called comet was actually a spaceship of some kind built and sent by an extraterrestrial intelligence.

While he did not specifically call out theories of aliens, Kshatriya saw it all in a positive light.

“I’m actually very excited that a lot of the world was speculating about the comet while NASA was in a period where we couldn’t speak about it due to the recent government shutdown,” he said.

“I think what I took away from that whole experience, and watching that as we were working during the shutdown, was just how interested and how excited people were about the possibility of what this comet could be.

“What I think is really awesome is that folks are interested in this incredible finding that we observed and that we have that came from the heavens, and what that means. It expanded people’s brains to think about how magical the universe could be, and I’ll tell you here at NASA, we think that every day.”

Along with unveiling their backlog of images, NASA leadership shared that this comet likely came from a solar system much older than the Earth’s, though it is unclear which system. Moving at more than 60 kilometers per second (134,000 mph), it had an icy nucleus estimated to be between 1,400 feet and 3.5 miles in diameter, surrounded by a cloud of gas and dust called a coma, made mostly of carbon dioxide, vaporized water, nickel, and iron.

Solidified in the extreme freezing temperatures of deep space, a comet’s elements vaporize as it is warmed by the sun’s rays. While the rate at which the object was losing those elements, which the scientists coined “bake off,” appeared similar to comets originating in this solar system, 3I/Atlas appeared to have an unusually large ratio of water ice to carbon dioxide, as well as unusually more nickel than iron.

Scientists also addressed two things that could allow speculation that 3I/Atlas was not just a comet: the appearance of a tail forming on the sunward side instead of streaking behind the main body, and any recording of acceleration as it came around the sun that would not be solely due to gravitational forces.

They said that a sunward tail had been observed before on several comets and would most likely be due to a lack of solar radiation pressure on escaping gases. While teams are still monitoring for any non-gravitational acceleration, the slight change that has been detected so far has been on par with other comets experiencing slight changes in orbit due to gas burn off.

“Every time something gets pushed off the comet, that acts like a little rocket engine at that moment, pushes in the other direction,” said Tom Statler, lead scientist for solar system small bodies. ”And so it’s very, very common to see comets have subtle changes in their orbits as a result of these little rocket forces, just called non-gravitational acceleration.”

NASA and its partners will continue observing the interstellar visitor, and more opportunities will become available as it moves closer to Earth in December before heading back toward the outer planets.

Meanwhile, more and more data already captured continues to come in, including some from the Parker Solar Probe that Fox said came in right before the press conference. And more revelations about this comet are anticipated to be found and shared from that still-unpublished data.

“It’s a long way from where we are today,” Statler said.

“Seeing the initial images to then making sure that they are accurately calibrated and processed to do science with, and then doing the analysis, combining the data sets, understanding them, and finally producing the scientific understanding—the knowledge of what this all means—which will be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

“The answers will come later on. We are still at this phase … where we’re figuring out what are even the right questions to ask about interstellar objects. This is a snapshot of where we are very early in the scientific process.”