NASA Breaks its Silence on 3I/Atlas

 

Even in the midst of this suspiciously convenient US government shutdown NASA have finally made a statement about the "comet" 3I/Atlas. This is actually not the first time the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have spoken out. Its acting head Sean Duffy replied to an inquisitive Tweet by Kim Kardashian. That is strange behaviour seeing as Avi Loeb tried to write to him requesting the HiRISE data and received no reply. Anna Paulina Luna repeated this in a formally worded political demand, but she was also ghosted. It's a bad sign when a public official ignores a scientist and member of Congress, but happily indulges the whims of a superannuated reality TV star. Source: https://x.com/SecDuffyNASA/status/1984011464961880441. However, they have now revealed more in an article by Brandi Vincent of Defence Scoop. NASA explains that their skeleton crew have indeed been monitoring the interstellar object as it moves through the solar system. I assume this includes the long sought after photos taken as it passed Mars. The Chinese space agency has released its own images of 3I from the Tianwen 1 orbiter, but their camera only has a 38 inch reflector; not as good as NASA's 50 inch one. They also say they will connect with "at least one congressional lawmaker" on Wednesday next week, which I assume means Ms Luna. NASA also have promised to release all relevant findings, data and observations once the US government reopens. Unfortunately at the moment there are no signs this is going to happen anytime soon, see: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c20ez8y0dv1t. Source: https://defensescoop.com/2025/11/04/3i-atlas-comet-us-government-monitoring-mysterious-interstellar-object. The latest news on 3I simply adds to the burgeoning mystery. A new image of the object, illustrated above, is one of the most detailed yet taken and comes from the astronomer Michael Jäger and his two colleagues. It shows a coma and tail, a much smaller one than Avi said it would need to explain the non-gravitational accelleration; however it has other interesting features. The emissions have a complex structure separated into a distinct series of plumes or jets, some away from the sun, some towards. In this way, 3I looks similar to how it appeared in the Hubble photos. Avi has done an interesting new interview on News Nation where he asks whether these jets are some form of engineering. They do indeed resemble human rocket exhaust. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ8tRs1Zg5g. The title of the video is pretty stark: Is 3I/ATLAS revving an engine?. If so, what will happen should it throttle up?
See here for background: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2025/07/interstellar-object-portal.html.