A realistic plan to send a spacecraft to interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas
Scientists have devised a mission profile that could actually get a spacecraft close to Comet 3I/Atlas sometime around 2085.
…the team found that an intercept could be achieved via a Solar Oberth maneuver, but the launch would have to occur in 2035 to achieve optimal alignment between Earth, Jupiter and 3I/ATLAS. The flight duration would be 50 years (though Hibberd notes that this could be reduced marginally). “2035 is optimal because the alignments of the celestial bodies involved (i.e. the Earth, Jupiter, Sun, and 3I/ATLAS) are the most propitious to reach 3I/ATLAS with a minimum Solar Oberth propulsion requirement from the probe, a minimum performance requirement for the launch vehicle, and a minimum flight time to the target,” he said.
The Solar Oberth maneuver has the spacecraft fire its engines at the moment it is zipping past the Sun at its closest and fastest, taking full advantage of that gravitational velocity.
You can read their paper here [pdf] As they note in their conclusion, this entire mission is based on using “a Starship Block 3 upper stage fully-refuelled in Low Earth Orbit.” It assumes that by 2035 Starship will be flying routinely and cheaply, and could be purchased at a reasonable cost for such a mission.
Or maybe donated in the name of science by some billionaire who happens to care about making the human race multi-planetary. Know anyone?
Personally, I wonder it this mission profile could be adapted to reach the first known interstellar object, Oumuamua. 3I/Atlas appears to simply be a comet. Though a visit would be of value it would not Earth-shaking. Oumuamua however was not a comet, but more importantly it was strange in every way. Though astronomers in 2019 declared based on the available data that it was definitely not an alien spaceship, that conclusion remains very uncertain. As I wrote at the time:
…for anyone to assume there is any certainty to this conclusion would be a grave mistake. It is merely the best guess, based on the available but somewhat limited data. The data however does not preclude more exotic explanations. Nothing is certain.
To me this object should get top priority.
Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Scientists have devised a mission profile that could actually get a spacecraft close to Comet 3I/Atlas sometime around 2085.
…the team found that an intercept could be achieved via a Solar Oberth maneuver, but the launch would have to occur in 2035 to achieve optimal alignment between Earth, Jupiter and 3I/ATLAS. The flight duration would be 50 years (though Hibberd notes that this could be reduced marginally). “2035 is optimal because the alignments of the celestial bodies involved (i.e. the Earth, Jupiter, Sun, and 3I/ATLAS) are the most propitious to reach 3I/ATLAS with a minimum Solar Oberth propulsion requirement from the probe, a minimum performance requirement for the launch vehicle, and a minimum flight time to the target,” he said.
The Solar Oberth maneuver has the spacecraft fire its engines at the moment it is zipping past the Sun at its closest and fastest, taking full advantage of that gravitational velocity.
You can read their paper here [pdf] As they note in their conclusion, this entire mission is based on using “a Starship Block 3 upper stage fully-refuelled in Low Earth Orbit.” It assumes that by 2035 Starship will be flying routinely and cheaply, and could be purchased at a reasonable cost for such a mission.
Or maybe donated in the name of science by some billionaire who happens to care about making the human race multi-planetary. Know anyone?
Personally, I wonder it this mission profile could be adapted to reach the first known interstellar object, Oumuamua. 3I/Atlas appears to simply be a comet. Though a visit would be of value it would not Earth-shaking. Oumuamua however was not a comet, but more importantly it was strange in every way. Though astronomers in 2019 declared based on the available data that it was definitely not an alien spaceship, that conclusion remains very uncertain. As I wrote at the time:
…for anyone to assume there is any certainty to this conclusion would be a grave mistake. It is merely the best guess, based on the available but somewhat limited data. The data however does not preclude more exotic explanations. Nothing is certain.
To me this object should get top priority.
Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Just let me say that I have less than full confidence in the current NASA’s ability to procure and operate a probe that can last for a 50 year mission.
David Eastman: Ah, but no one was suggesting NASA procure and operate this probe. The scientists don’t say who should do it, and I specifically suggested that Musk finance the mission and have SpaceX run it.
David Eastman – agreed, even if they manage to procure it & launch on time, how long will the lead free solder & soy wiring insulation not short out?
Given the rate of propulsion tech improvement, we are fast approaching the time where flight times will exponentially decrease to the point where somewhere down the road, the probe will be recovered and put in some future museum. Interestingly, New Horizons, which left earth 3-4/km/s faster than the Voyagers will never catch up to them because of the lack of gravity assists during flight. Cheers-
A better investment I think would be to prepare a high velocity probe (or several of them) with suitable instrumentation to place on standby for when a good near term intercept candidate graces us with an encounter. With the Verz Rubin observatory now on line it is inevitable that many new such visitors will be identified in the years ahead, and with a. ready to go mission I expect we would find a likely candidate within just a few years that we could get up close and personal with in less than a decade. It’s simply a matter of identifying them early enough to use the Gretzky principle (shooting to where the puck will be in hockey) to launch for an intercept that will occur within the solar system instead of having to play catch up and run one down back out in interstellar space.
Oumuamua deserves a mission more.
Borisov and 3I/Atlas are almost certainly comets.
Oumuamua may be a shard of rock….fossils?
I could see a batholith shattering…being hurled off a planet that suffered a massive impact.
I have seen rocks “explode” randomly from the Sun’s heat.
My guess is that the anomalous acceleration came from the cold soaked body warming from the Sun –but cracking as it cooled…ejecta spalling off acting as thrust–but no ice/volatiles left by then.
Atlas and Borisov likely look like a cross between Arrakov and the Rosetta comet–we know what they and Halley look like.
“…making the human race multi-planetary.”
Multi-planetary implies the “human” establishments will diverge biologically & culturally.
Different gravitational, magnetic, radiation [solar included] & chemical environments.
“Multi-planetary implies the “human” establishments will diverge biologically & culturally.”
True, but sure beats the alternative.
Lets say it takes over 1000 years before the humans diverge genetically noticeably.
A thousand years is a very long time technologically. Long enough to actually physically terraform Mars. Add mass till its closer to Earth. Has more water. Livable without pressure suits.
In a thousand years we could be a fully space living species gathering and using everything we need from space never needing to dip back into a gravity well unless we want a colony.
Lets work toward becoming a space based species and send out generational ships to other solar systems. Even systems with no inhabitable planets.
No love for Polyhymnia…. supposedly more dense than Osmium?
pzatchok wrote”In a thousand years we could be a fully space living species gathering and using everything we need from space never needing to dip back into a gravity well unless we want a colony. Lets work toward becoming a space based species and send out generational ships to other solar systems. Even systems with no inhabitable planets.”
Gerard K. O’Neil noted that space-based colonies would avoid the resource-expense of descending into and climbing out of the gravity wells of planets and moons. Thus, we may not want colonies on planets, just mining settlements, at most. If we are a space-based species, with our homes and cities in space, then generational ships would not be the difficult human undertaking that we think.
We have a planetary bias, but that could easily fade as man makes space, rather than the surfaces of planets, our home.
We may not even need to terraform Mars.