Chinese spacecraft shoots images of 3I/ATLAS during Mars fly-by

They’ve got their Is on the prize.

China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter has captured an image of 3I/ATLAS during its fly-by of Mars, furthering efforts to shed light on the interstellar anomaly — which some have suspected has alien origins.

The comet can be seen streaking across the cosmos in an animated GIF compiled from several observations taken between October 1 and 4, Space.com reported. There was also a standalone photo snapped on October 3.

“This was the first attempt to photograph such a distant and relatively dim target,” the China National Space Administration (CNSA) explained in a statement.

The Tianwen-1 orbiter, which was deployed to the Red Planet in 2021, captured the intergalactic visitor by using a High-Resolution Imaging Camera (HiRIC) that’s similar to HiRISE on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), but with slightly lower resolution.

Capturing the comet was no mean feat given that the spacecraft’s cameras are designed to image the well-lit surface of a planet and not a distant and relatively small comet moving at 129,800 mph.

The team pointed out that 3I/ATLAS 10,000 to 100,000 times dimmer than their Martian targets, IFLS science reported.

“The use of the high-resolution camera carried by the Tianwen-1 orbiter was determined, and key imaging strategies were carefully designed, ultimately leading to the successful completion of the observation,” CNSA reported. “This mission maximized the imaging capabilities of the high-resolution camera, specifically targeting the faint target.”

They noted that the image captured the “comet’s distinctive features, consisting of a nucleus and a surrounding coma, with a diameter reaching several thousand kilometers.”

“Based on this observational data, researchers are conducting further in-depth studies of ATLAS,” the space agency declared.

Capturing the comet on camera has been a real space race of late.

The cosmic oddity shifted to the opposite side of the Sun in September, getting lost in the solar glare, with experts claiming that it wouldn’t be visible from Earth until at least later this month.

During that time, ATLAS was snapped by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) spacecraft Mars Express, as well as the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) from the orbit of the Red Planet.

Meanwhile, astrophysicist Avi Loeb accused NASA of refusing to show him a HiRISE camera image snapped of the comet taken on Oct. 2. He suggested that the photo could’ve offered clues to ATLAS’ non-cometary characteristics, such as a tail that points toward and not away from the sun as is standard.

Earlier this month, GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna called on acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy to share unreleased data and images of the Manhattan-sized comet, which is the third ever interstellar object recorded in our solar system.

“I write to request the release of specific observational data related to 3I/ATLAS, recently captured by NASA missions,” Luna wrote. “This information is of great importance to advancing our understanding of interstellar visitors and their interaction with our solar system.”

Loeb praised Luna for taking the initiative in a recent post on Medium, writing, “We all owe a debt of deep gratitude for the visionary support displayed by Representative Luna to frontier science through her letter.”

Since ATLAS’s discovery in July, the Harvard scientist has claimed that the object has been exhibiting a host of anomalous behaviors that could suggest that it’s an extraterrestrial probe.

In a recent paper, the scientist wrote that the object’s non-gravitational acceleration — which was recorded by NASA last week — combined with the fact that it glowed “bluer than the sun” could indicate the “technological signature of an internal engine.”