NASA Withholding New Images of Mysterious Object From Beyond Solar System

Last month, mysterious interstellar object 3I/ATLAS came within just 18 million miles of Mars during its unusual trajectory through our solar system.

During its approach, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter used its HiRISE camera to take high-resolution images of the rare visitor, which is widely suspected among experts to be a comet. But thanks to a bureaucratic nightmare triggered by the ongoing federal government shutdown, which kicked off just days after the images were taken, scientists have yet to see them over a month later.

Last week, representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) sent a letter to interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy, urging the space agency to release the images, which offer roughly three times the resolution of the object compared to July images taken by NASA’s Hubble