IAWN launches 2-month mission to track 3I/ATLAS, planetary defense team on alert

The International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) has launched a two-month campaign to track the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS as it races through our solar system, just days after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) confirmed its true nature.

The United Nations (UN) says the comet, first discovered in July, presents a unique opportunity for IAWN due to its prolonged observability from the Earth.

It further stated that although 3I/ATLAS poses no direct threat to the Earth, the planetary defense teams will continue to observe the comet.

The news comes after NASA released the latest images confirming 3I/ATLAS was a comet. A senior official, Amit Kshatriya, said, “We very much want to find signs of life in the universe... but 3I/ATLAS is a comet.”

The Harvard astrophysicist Dr Avi Loeb, who has been very consistent in his view that 3I/ATLAS appears to be an alien comet, still defies the NASA confirmation.

In a recent blog post on Medium, Avi wrote, “The trajectory of the space object suggests that it might deploy satellites around Jupiter for surveillance and intelligence gathering.”

He added that ATLAS is following the path to reach Jupiter's Hill radius (the area where the planet's gravity dominates over the Sun’s gravity), where objects can hold position with little fuel.

Dr Loeb predicted the path based on the calculation from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.