Two Mars probes have taken new images of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, which the European Space Agency (ESA) captured the mysterious object from the closest closest, according to an ESA statement.
This comet comes from an unknown star system that goes far beyond our star system and is currently patrolling the interior of the solar system for several months. The comet approached Mars on Friday (October 3) ahead of its close encounter with the Sun on October 30th. During the recent approach to Mars, the comet has entered view of ESA and NASA’s robotic spacecraft, including ESA’s Exomers Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Mars Express Orbiter.
The comet, which soars 18.6 million miles (30 million kilometers) above, has been proven to be too dark on the Mars Express. However, the ExoMars TGO satellite successfully captured a series of images, and ESA combined them into animated GIFs. The animation shows a comet appearing as a blurry bright spot, descent towards the center of the frame, moving away from Mars at an estimated speed of 130,000 miles per hour (210,000 km/h).
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What do you see?
The bright spots represent the comet’s nucleus (the sphere of ice rock that makes up the body of the comet) and its coma (nebulae-like gas clouds that flow as the nucleus heats up). According to NASA, when comets suddenly approach the sun, the ice on the surface sublims into gas, making the comb bigger and brighter. The pressure of the incoming solar wind can blow away the gas and dust from the coma from the sun, sometimes giving the comet a distinctive tail.
Because TGO is designed to monitor Mars’ surfaces from just a few hundred miles away, the equipment is not optimal for recording distant, fast moving objects like 3I/ATLAS, ESA officials pointed out.
“The comet is about 10,000 to 100,000 times darker than its normal target,” Nick Thomas, principal investigator of ExoMars’ color stereo surface imaging systems, said in a statement. As a result, the new image does not show tails. But that doesn’t mean that comets don’t have it. As 3I/ATLAS approaches the sun, both its coma and tail are likely to grow and brighten, ESA officials added.
At this time, new images do not provide new insight into this singular object, but ESA will continue to analyze images from both Martian satellites in the hopes of revealing new data on the potential size and composition of comets.
As NASA has stopped all public communications during the ongoing US government closure, it remains unclear whether NASA’s dedicated Mars rover or satellites discovered the comet during its approach. However, live images captured by the Persaviorance rover’s right navigation camera on October 4 showed bright striped objects in the sky, which could be comet 3I/ATLAS, according to Live Science’s sister site Space.com. No official information regarding the images has been released.
3I/ATLAS is the third interstellar object ever confirmed, after 1I/’Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, and is considered the largest ever, with an estimated width of between 3 and 7 miles (5 and 11 km). Its speed and orbit suggests it has been flying around the galaxy for billions of years, perhaps much older than the Sun.
The comet is currently heading behind the sun, which is invisible to Earth, but will be visible again by ground telescopes in early December. The comet will pass through Jupiter in March 2026 and will leave the solar system forever.
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