NASA releases spacecraft images of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS near Mars

NASA on Wednesday released images captured by a fleet of government spacecraft of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it passed by Mars in early October, agency officials said. The pictures remained out of sight during a 43-day U.S. government shutdown and had not been acknowledged by NASA while the government was closed.

The images were taken by a variety of spacecraft, including the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Lucy mission, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), STEREO-A, MAVEN and the PUNCH mission. Tom Statler, lead scientist at NASA for solar system small bodies, likened the situation to cameras at different places in a baseball stadium: "Everybody’s got a camera, and they’re trying to get a picture of the ball, and nobody has a perfect view, and everybody has a different camera." The Lucy image shows a backlit comet that could not be seen from Earth.

Scientists said measurements show the comet differs from typical solar system comets in some ways — notably the ratio of carbon dioxide to water and the ratio of nickel to iron, and in the light reflected off its dust, which they called "unusual." But NASA officials said those quirks do not indicate alien origin.

"We haven’t seen any technosignatures," Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate, said. Alfred McEwen, a planetary geologist, said the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image was "a smeared image" but added: "It definitely looks like a comet. Yes, it’s fuzzy.

Key Topics

Science, Nasa, Mars, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Lucy Mission, Punch Mission