Avi Loeb, the controversial cosmologist of Harvard University, has accused NASA of withholding important data on the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, and is mobilizing the US Congress to demand its release. But this alleged concealment of evidence is not what it seems.
Weeks without seeing the photos. In one post on your blogLoeb denounces that NASA has not made public images of the object taken with the HiRISE camera of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter probe from Mars orbit for weeks. These images, captured between October 2 and 3, when 3I/ATLAS passed within 30 million kilometers of the red planet, are, according to Loeb, “extremely valuable” scientific data.
The reason is that they would have a resolution of 30 kilometers per pixel, three times greater than the best available image of the interstellar object, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. This “side perspective” could be important for understanding the object’s geometry and its brightness, so Loeb asked US Congresswoman Paulina Luna to demand that NASA’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, release it.
The explanation. NASA has justified the lack of images with a very earthly argument: the delays caused by the closure of the United States government since October 1. NASA is officially on “shutdown” and with 83% of its staff on unpaid leave due to the lack of agreement in Congress on the 2026 federal budgets.
Only the International Space Station control room and the operators in charge of ship and satellite security, as well as a handful of critical jobs, continue to function. The rest (a large part of science, dissemination, aid processing, etc.) is on pause.
Why so much interest in 3I/ATLAS. Comet 3I/ATLAS is the third interstellar object detected in our solar system. Since its discovery, it has shown behavior somewhat disconcerting which has led Avi Loeb to defend the hypothesis that it could be an artificial extraterrestrial object.
The latest anomaly occurred near its perihelion (the closest point in its orbit to the Sun) on October 29, when 3I/ATLAS shone brightly in blue and experienced an acceleration which cannot be explained by the gravity of the Sun. Most likely? That the comet was degassing as it warmed up, and the sublimated ice acted as propellants.
If you don’t pay attention to it you get bored. Loeb has calculated the possibility that 3I/ATLAS is a natural object: “less than one part in ten quadrillion”. The astronomer highlights the trajectory almost perfectly aligned with the plane of the planets, an unusually large mass, a very low proportion of water (only 4%) and a surprising abundance of nickel as evidence.
But this is not the first time that Loeb has proposed that an interstellar object is a technological and “possibly hostile” object. In fact, it’s the second time he’s done it (the first with ‘Oumuamua), and we only know of three interstellar objects that have visited our solar system.
The scientific community does not play along. Compared to Loeb’s hypotheses, the vast majority of astronomers offer much more mundane explanations. The blue glow is consistent with emissions of ionized gas from other active comets. Other physical characteristics could be explained if 3I/ATLAS were the ejection of a piece of exoplanet by a natural collision far from Earth.
As for the news that “NASA” activated its defense protocol against 3I/ATLAS, it also has a simple explanation: the International Asteroid Warning Network has chosen measure the position of the interstellar comet for an observation campaign that had been planned since 2024, not with the aim of defending ourselves from. an alien attack, but to improve astrometry systems.
Image | Q. Zhang and K. Dattams
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