NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, designed to study Jupiter’s icy moon, could soon be brushed by a stream of charged particles ripped from a comet that didn’t originate in our solar system. The potential encounter, predicted to occur between October 30 and November 6, offers scientists a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sample material from an interstellar comet, 3I/ATLAS, without having to chase it.

Researchers Samuel Grant from the Finnish Meteorological Institute and Geraint Jones of the European Space Agency (ESA), who made the prediction, describe the event as both safe and scientifically priceless, Space.com reported.

“We have virtually no data on the interior of interstellar comets and the star systems that formed them,” Grant told Space.com. “Sampling the tail in this way is the

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