Nasa’s Mars probe goes dark after encounter with interstellar visitor
When 3I/ATLAS was discovered in July, the science community was delighted. But as the interstellar object comes closer and closer towards us, things are getting a little bit weird. Nasa has revealed that it has lost contact with a Mars probe just two weeks after its close interaction with the visitor, to the point where it has stopped transmitting and has even changed its orbit. So, what’s going on? (Picture: International Gemini Observatory)
3I/ATLAS is just the third ever recorded visitor from outside of our solar system. On Monday, the American space agency said the MAVEN spacecraft went dark on December 4 while it was observing the mysterious visitor Nasa says is just a comet. The MAVEN has been orbiting Mars since 2014 and has served as a communications relay for man-made rovers exploring the Martian surface. But as the probe moved behind Mars while tracking the interstellar object, it suddenly stopped transmitting and started rotating in an unusual manner. (Picture: ICQ Comet Observations)
As Nasa cannot get direct data from the spacecraft, it has to analyse fragments of tracking information to figure out what’s gone wrong, but the team won’t know for sure how MAVEN’s orbit has changed until it starts transmitting again. MAVEN was 18million miles away from 3I/ATLAS in October when it reportedly took a collection of photographs as 3I/ATLAS passed the Red Planet – images which drew widespread criticism for their poor quality. (Picture: NASA, ESA, David Jewitt)
This is the first time in a decade that something may have actually knocked the probe offline and disrupted its orbit. And it’s led to some wild theories on social media that the space object is actually a ‘UFO’ and the communications blackout is somehow tied to 3I/ATLAS making its closest pass by Earth on today (Friday). (Picture: Nasa/Goddard/SwRI/JHU-APL)
On social media, users questioned the poor quality images of 3I/ATLAS, with one writing: ‘Either NASA is lying, and won’t release the images because they know what it is, or whatever is piloting 3I/ATLAS knocked MAVEN offline. Either way, NASA is lying.’ Another said: ‘Does anyone still trust NASA? Like, is there anyone out there who really thinks MAVEN just glitched out and NASA isn’t hoarding the data in secret to make sure no new 3I/ATLAS images showing UFO sneak into the public sphere?’ (Picture: Gianluca Masi via AP)
However, it is important to note that 3I/ATLAS had passed the spacecraft a couple of weeks earlier and was not close to MAVEN when the malfunction occurred. Nasa previously released some of the photos MAVEN took during its close encounter with 3/ATLAS in October, but it’s unknown how many images of the object were still to be transmitted when the probe went dark. (Picture: Facebook / Mitsunori Tsumura)
Today, 3I/ATLAS will come within 170million miles of Earth, which will mark its closest pass by our planet on its journey through the solar system. 3I/ATLAS is the third interstellar object we have on record. The other two are known as ‘Oumuamua, which was spotted in 2017, by the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS1 telescope. The second was Comet 2I/Borisov, found in 2019. (Picture: Getty) Add Metro as a Preferred Source on Google Add as preferred source
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