Interstellar Visitor Seen by NASA’s Rover in the Sky of Mars

On Saturday (4), the Perseverance rover, exploring Mars since 2021, recorded a curious beam of light streaking across the planet’s sky. The image, taken by the robot’s navigation camera (Navcam), drew attention for being captured just a few hours after the closest approach of the interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS to the planet, according to predictions released by the European Space Agency (ESA).
Neither NASA nor the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), responsible for the operation of Perseverance, confirmed whether the captured brightness actually corresponds to the comet. The uncertainty arises amid the US government shutdown, which suspended a large part of the space agency’s activities – which had previously informed that the rover was among the equipment prepared to observe the ‘intruder’ passing through the Solar System.
Read more:
Interstellar visitor with unusual metals is unlike any other comet
‘Time tunnel’ goes back 10 million years to find origin of interstellar visitor
Getting close to an interstellar visitor is not science fiction
Shape of interstellar object in image raises suspicions
The release of the images and NASA’s ‘silence’ reverberated on social media, with speculations that the cylindrical object visible in the image would be an alien spacecraft. However, experts guarantee that there is no mystery at all.
Even astrophysicist Avi Loeb, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who has considered this hypothesis, ruled out the possibility. In his blog, he explained that the elongated shape of the trace was caused by the camera’s exposure time, while the comet swiftly moved across the Martian sky.
According to Loeb, the camera took about ten minutes to generate the final image, from stacking hundreds of individual captures. During this interval, the 3I/ATLAS traveled a long trajectory, resulting in the observed luminous effect. ‘The comet would have looked like a circular point in a single photo, which has a maximum exposure time of 3.28 seconds for the Navcam’.
NASA’s observations of the object depend on the political situation
Discovered in July this year, the comet 3I/ATLAS is the third object from outside the Solar System already identified ‘in our area’. Its closest approach to Mars occurred on Friday (3), when it passed about 30 million km away from the planet. The ESA confirmed that it also directed the Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) spacecraft to follow the phenomenon.
NASA intended to make additional observations with telescopes like the Hubble, James Webb, and TESS. However, with over 80% of its employees furloughed due to the shutdown, some of these operations may be postponed until the political situation is resolved.