Humanity urged to ‘intercept’ 3I/ATLAS ‘spaceship’ earlier than it is gone perpetually
As the mysterious object hurtling through space moves away from Earth, space buffs are being told to try and reach the comet before it disappears from view completely
Humanity is being urged to try and stop a comet hurtling close to Earth in order to study it. It comes as the object was revealed to be an asteroid, not an alien space craft like many had hoped for.
The object, known as 3I/ATLAS, has already been caught several times on camera flying through space. Things reached their most exciting on Friday (December 19) as the comet reached its closest point with Earth, leaving scientists desperate to find out more about the interstellar object.
Photos have caught the comet-like object flying through, but some scientists have been keen to point out different irregularities. Now, with 3I/ATLAS now set to fly away and never be seen again by earthlings, scientists are now pushing for the comet to be stopped in some way.
Travelling through our solar system at a massive 264,000 kilometres an hour, 3I/ATLAS is travelling faster than any human-made spacecraft could ever go. This had led many to believe that the object could have been something from a more intelligent lifeform.
Boffins have been baffled by 3I/ATLAS ever since it was first discovered moving through our solar system in July, and has fast become the most studied object in recent memory, according to Live Science. Its origins remain a mystery as it is believed to have travelled from millions of kilometres away, but other key information remains sketchy.
Whilst we have been studying the comet as it whizzes through our solar system with all our state-of-the-art equipment, the “interstellar visitor” remains nothing more than a blur of gas and two tails. As a result, some scientists are calling for the asteroid to be “intercepted”.
Their method of trying to latch onto the comet would mean crashing an entire spacecraft into the object. Such a move, they say, would help us understand the comet better and to find out important information about what the rock is made from.
As well as this, the spacecraft could help to gather humanity’s first ever interstellar samples, helping scientists to deeper understand what the universe is made up of. It could also point to other, larger questions of how similar our solar system is to other ones in the Milky Way.
Darryl Seligman, an astronomer from Michigan State University, says this opportunity could be the only time we as a species could learn more about what it outside our galaxy. He urged the scientific community to lobby for a space probe on 3I/ATLAS.
“We only have one shot at this object and then it’s gone forever,” he said. “So we want as much information from all our observatories as we can possibly get.”
If scientists were able to get their way, this would not be the first time that a spacecraft has been used to deliberately crash into a comet. Back in 2023, NASA’s DART mission proved that crashing an object into an asteroid or a comet would be able to change its trajectory.
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