ESA publishes 3I/Atlas Image

 

The European Space Agency has published some imagery from its obeservation of 3I/Atlas as it passed Mars. This is the first of the five space agencies imvolved to do so. The ESA used its ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and Mars Express spacecraft to gather data on 3I from its cloest point of approach to the red planet at eighteen millions miles. This is not the kind of work the orbiters were designed for and so the results are not as good as I'd hoped, but this still gives us the only view of the interstellar object we've had since it vanished from the sight of terrestrial telescopes. We can't tell the nucleus size because the resolution is not good enough, but you can tell that the object remains in one piece as it nears perihelion. You can see the object clearly in the image as a fuzzy white blob. The lines in the image illustrated above are actually stars; they are streaked because of the fivesecond exposure time while the TGO's Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) camera was tracking 3I. Source: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/ESA_s_ExoMars_and_Mars_Express_observe_comet_3I_ATLAS. This is a step in the right direction and I thank the ESA for being so open so soon; but the big reveal must come from NASA's HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter. At the moment, infuriatingly, NASA is affected by the US government shutdown. Only a skeleton crew, known as the "red watch", was operating the MRO and any data they've captured has not been processed let alone published. All other personell have been furloughed. The shutdown has suspended the NASA live data feed and website updates. This eventuality is almost darkly comical. That petty bureaucracy should hamper such an important and unique scientific moment is worthy of Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It is astonishingly convenient too. For anybody who wishes to delay publication if, for example, NASA have captured some information that they're afraid to tell the people; they have the perfect pretext. However, this coverup cannot last long. In just over a month 3I will emerge from the solar conjunction and if it's not there, or in the wrong place, what will NASA say then? They might as well get it over with. Rip the plaster off now!
See here for background: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2025/07/interstellar-object-portal.html.