Harvard Astronomer Says Mysterious Interstellar Object May Be Blasting Its Thrusters to Get Away From Us as Fast as Possible

Mysterious interstellar object 3I/ATLAS has reemerged from behind the Sun, allowing astronomers to once again get a glimpse at the rare visitor.

The object, which is generally believed by experts to be a comet that’s predominantly made up of carbon dioxide ice, is continuing on its highly eccentric trajectory, and is expected to make its closest pass of the Earth just days before Christmas on its way back out of our star system.

And judging by the latest data, 3I/ATLAS has survived its perihelion — or its closest approach to the Sun — largely intact, instead of breaking apart, as Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb had hypothesized in a blog post earlier this week.

New images of 3I/ATLAS, taken by the Nordic Optical Telescope on the Canary Islands, “show a single body, with no evidence for brea