China has matched the European Space Agency’s feat of taking a snapshot of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS from a Mars orbiter.

Astronomers spotted 3I/ATLAS in July and the Minor Planet Center noted its “highly eccentric, hyperbolic orbit” that suggested it came from outside our solar system. Later analysis confirmed that theory, making 3I/Atlas just the third such object humanity has ever observed, after the 2017 discovery of 1I/Oumuamua and 2020’s 2I/Borisov .

Interest in such objects is naturally high so NASA used the Hubble Space Telescope to check it out in July.

In early October the European Space Agency (ESA) pointed its ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and Mars Express craft at the comet, because it passed just 30 million km from the Red Planet. The orbiters were therefore closer to the co

See Full Page