Nasa shares new images of 3I/ATLAS and rejects alien spacecraft ‘rumours’
US space agency officials say that 3I/ATLAS, the third interstellar object ever observed, is a comet
Nasa released fresh images on Wednesday of the interstellar object called 3I/ATLAS that astronomers have determined is a comet probably even older than our solar system, as US space agency officials dismissed speculation that it was actually an alien spacecraft.
3I/ATLAS was first spotted in July by an Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS, telescope located in Rio Hurtado, Chile, and has been tracked by astronomers since then. Its unusual trajectory indicated that it was passing through our solar system from parts unknown.
“It’s natural to wonder what it is. We love that the world wondered along with us,” Nicola Fox, associate administrator of Nasa’s Science Mission Directorate, told a news briefing in Greenbelt, Maryland, referring to the comet as “our friendly solar system visitor”.
“We were quick to be able to say, ‘Yup, it definitely behaves like a comet’. We certainly haven’t seen any technosignatures or anything from it that would lead us to believe it was anything other than a comet.”
3I/ATLAS is only the third interstellar object ever observed by astronomers travelling through the solar system. The others were comets called 1I/‘Oumuamua, detected in 2017, and 2I/Borisov, discovered in 2019.