LIVE: NASA REVEALS 3I/ATLAS IMAGES - NASA Media Briefing

Join us for live coverage and discussion of the long awaited reveal of images of 3I/ATLAS. NASA will host a live event at 3 p.m. EST, Wednesday, Nov. 19, to share imagery of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS collected by a number of the agency’s missions. The event will take place at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

To see the VIDEO of this episode, click or copy link -https://youtube.com/live/6YNy55OV4RU 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to this NASA briefing live stream.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Today.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
NASA's going to be releasing their three i at list
images that were taken on the high Rise, which is
a super fancy camera on the Mars reconnaissance orbiter. They
took these images back in October, very early October, but
because of the government shutdown, they said, oh, you know what, guys,
we can't release these images. Forty plus days later, two

(00:28):
letters from Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, conversations with her, and
even Kim Kardashian shocking, I know we're finally getting these
pictures now. Most people are pretty skeptical, and I can
totally understand why, with NASA's previous track record, which was
covered in today's UFO News update with the latest ISS

(00:48):
video stream being cut after a very strange object was
passing by one of the cameras. So yes, I understand
on everyone has very high expectations. But what I am
looking forward to today during this briefing is the questions
that are going to be asked by the media and
by the public. The public will be asking questions today

(01:11):
and hopefully they'll answer some good ones. All right, we
are live, are you guys able to hear the audio,
Please let me know if you're able to hear the
audio because I can't. Wow, it's already glitching. Fantastic find machade.

(01:57):
It's not working on their website, but it's going to be.
It's worthing on their YouTube, so we're going to switch
it on over to YouTube.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Everyone there is.

Speaker 4 (02:10):
We are joined today by Ahma Shathriya, NASA's Associate Administrator,
Nicki Fox, Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Sean
Domigol Goldman Director for the Astrophysics Division, and Tom Statler,
lead Scientist for Solar System Small Bodies in the Planetary
Science Division. We'll be taking questions from the media on

(02:32):
the phone bridge and through social media. But before we
get started, let's learn more about this fascinating comment and
share some images.

Speaker 5 (02:39):
I'm it kick us off, Hi.

Speaker 6 (02:41):
Everyone, America leads the way in space exploration, As Courtney noted,
a NASA funded telescope, the Atlas Survey Telescope in Chile,
first reported observations of the commet on July first, twenty
twenty five, to the Minor Planet Center, and NASA has
been tracking and studying Comment three ietlists ever since. We're
here today to give you the latest of what we
know about Commet three I Atlas and what we still

(03:03):
want to know. But first, what is a comet. It's
a small, natural solid body that is a combination of
rocky and icy material that evaporates as it gets warm
as it warms when it's close to a star like
the Sun. But to start with, I'd like to address
the rumors right at the beginning. I think it's important
that we talk about that this object is a comet.
It looks and behaves like a comet and has and

(03:24):
all evidence points to it being a comet. But this
one came from outside the Solar System, which makes it fascinating, exciting,
and scientifically very important. This is only the third interstellar
object like this that humanity has ever found. A little
bit more about the rumors, I think it's I think
it's very important, and I'm actually very excited that a
lot of the world was speculating about the comet while

(03:47):
NASA was in a period where we couldn't speak about
it due to the recent garment shutdown. I think what
I what I what I took away from that whole
experience and watching that as we were working during the shutdown,
was just how interested and how excited people were about
the possibility of what this comment could be. There was
a lot of speculation about what it could be. But

(04:07):
what I what I think is really awesome is that
folks were interested in this incredible finding that we observed
and that we have that came from the heavens and
what that what that means, what it could mean about
how magical the universe could be. It expanded people's brains
to think about what how magical the universe could be.
And I'll tell you here at naw SO we think
that every day, and so it's really great that we

(04:29):
were able to join us while we were you know,
not able to comment do it because of the shutdown
constraints about what that comment is. Because we think the
universe is a magical place, and we spend ear treasure
and we spend all of our time trying to make
sure that we explore that and share with you as
much as we can. In fact, we want very much
to find signs of life in the universe. In fact,

(04:50):
just a few months ago we were with you and
we talked about what we think might be the signal
from from ancient life on the surface of Mars, from
our amazing machines that have been were over the planet
for thirty years to look for those things. That is
something that's really important for us to learn about and discover.
It could be an amazing discovery if and when we
can confirm that. But three Ietlists is a comet. So

(05:13):
my colleagues from the Science Mission Director will go through
the images in detail.

Speaker 7 (05:17):
But just to give you a peek, here's.

Speaker 6 (05:19):
One of the images from the closest physical instrument we
had to the commet, from the high Rise Instrument on
our Mars or Comments disorbiter, taken on October second, as
the comment sailed by at a distance of nineteen million
miles from the instrument, you can see that comment through
IATLIS looks like a fuzzy why ball. That ball is
a cloud of dust and ice called the coma, which
is shed by the comet as it continues its trajectory

(05:40):
towards the Sun. I'll leave it to my esteem colleagues
to share for the details, and I'd like to introduce
you to the head of NASA Science, Nikki Fox.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 8 (05:50):
It is such a rare opportunity for us to be
able to observe this interstell a comet, and NASA science
is being given this this really really exciting opportunity to
do it, and literally from the moment of its discovery.
Just like Ahmitt said, comets are tiny cosmics nobles, and
by studying them we can learn about the environment from

(06:11):
basically where they formed, where they came from. This one
came from a different environment from our own, and so
we're already starting to see some really interesting differences to
comets from our own solar system. Three I Atlas, as
you heard, is the third known interstellar object to pass
through our Solar system, the first one being identified in
twenty seventeen. While these types of interstellar objects have long

(06:35):
been predicted, we are just beginning to be able to
find them thanks to the newest technologies with our network
of Earth based telescopes, which are designed to find small,
fast moving objects in space. The NASA funded at Las
Survey telescope, which made the discovery, is part of NASA's
Planetary Defense Network. Our telescopes are always watching the ski

(06:57):
is to keep us safe, and in doing so they
occasionally make major scientifically interesting discoveries.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Just like this one right away.

Speaker 8 (07:06):
Of course, NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office established they studied it,
and they established the three I atlas is not a
danger to Earth. In fact, it's at least twice twice
as far away as the distance between the Earth and
our Sun. On October thirtieth, the comet itself reached the

(07:26):
closest it will ever be to the Sun when it
crossed just inside Mars's orbit, which is why the image
that Marmit just showed. He noted it was the closest
instrument physically to the comet. Because the comet was right
inside the orbit of Mars, Earth was on the opposite
side of the Sun, which is about as far away
as our planet can.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
Possibly be from Mars.

Speaker 8 (07:50):
It's been clear from the moment of discovery that the
comet was going to pass on the opposite side of
the Sun from where the Earth is. However, it was
also clear that its position behind the Sun was going
to make observations from Earth very, very difficult. And that
is why we are so happy to have our incredible
fleet of NASA science spacecraft all across the Solar System.

(08:11):
A boy, were they ready for this event. NASA science
assets on board. Our missions have provided the United States
the unique capability to observe three I Atlas almost the
entire time it passes through our celestial neighborhood.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Everything NASA science does is.

Speaker 8 (08:28):
Interconnected, and nearly twenty mission teams have been working together
to really rise to this challenge. Twenty mission teams, by
the way, and counting everything we're learning about the comment
is possible because of the distribution of all of the
different instruments on our spacecraft with different capabilities, and our

(08:48):
note that for some of them, we've even pushed our
scientific instruments beyond their normal capabilities, beyond the things that
they were designed to achieve, to allow us to capture
this amazing glimpse at this interstellar traveler. In other words,
we can study this comet so well because we have
many different assets in different locations, observing things in different

(09:12):
wavelengths in different ways, with different instruments, each set of
observations providing a different lens for understanding objects in the sky.
So NASA's science team has kept watch on THREEIAT lists
for nearly its entire journey through the Solar System for
the first time ever. So I'll just quickly go through
the timeline of which NASA spacecraft have observed the comet

(09:34):
thus far, and we're still going. There will be more
opportunities to observe this comment as it continues its journey
through the Solar System, passing the orbit of Jupiter in
spring of twenty twenty six. So the NASA assets that
are gathering observations of three iat lists include Hubble, the
James Webspace Telescope Tests, Swift SPHEREx Perseverance, Mars Rover, Mars

(10:00):
Reconnaissance Orbiter, Maven, Europa Clipper, Lucy Psyche personal favorite, Parkasolo Probe,
Punch Stereo, and ISA NASA's Soho mission and our note
that Parkasolo Probe's data were just downloaded yesterday and indeed
we did catch several glimpses of this amazing comment. The
scientific community is hard at work analyzing these images, and everyone,

(10:24):
as always, is welcome to take a look. At NASA,
we embrace open science, We make all of our data
available to the public twenty four to seven, and we invite,
in fact, we really want you to tell us what
you're observing and what you think about what we're looking at.
We're still learning even about what questions we still need
to ask, and this, of course is the scientific process

(10:47):
in action. All the data go to a public archive.
We get those images as soon as we're able to
from all of our eyes in space. As always, I
am excited to see what new things we love about
our friendly Solar System visitor in the days and in
fact the years to come. So now I'm going to
pass over to Sean. He's going to tell you about

(11:09):
what our astrophysics missions have seen. They of course, were
some of the first things to look at the comet,
and images from several of them have been available since
the beginning of the summer. So I'm going to ask
you to set the stage for us, tell us what
we've already seen before we hand over to Tom to
tell us that all the new stuff.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
Take it away.

Speaker 9 (11:28):
Sean, thanks making happy to give you some background NASA's
astrophysics missions, like all our missions, they are designed to
do things that would otherwise be impossible in this case.
In this case, our nation's space telescopes steer deeper and
more sharply into the universe than any other observatories in
the world, and that means we're often the first to

(11:49):
follow up and study near Earth objects or comments like
three i atlists after they're initially detected and seeing powerful
gay is it lets us these telescopes see distant galaxies,
those little dots you might hear about. They also allow
us to observe details about objects like three i at
lists a little bit sooner, and the earlier we learn
about these objects, the earlier we can share this information

(12:11):
with the world, including the science community and our partners
across the planet. That you often have ground based assets
or other space based assets so that they can conduct
additional observations with their telescopes. In this case, our astrophysics
missions came together to take advantage of this rare opportunity
to study this comment that came to us.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
From outside the Solar System.

Speaker 9 (12:33):
From our flagship space telescopes to smaller missions like Tests
and Swift, they all have, as Nikky said, different complementary capabilities.
They don't just do things that would otherwise be impossible.
They do things that even our other great telescopes can't do.
So every time we add to the fleet, we add
additional capabilities that expand the realm of the possible. In
this case, that let us refine the orbit of this

(12:55):
structure early on determine what its structure is and what
its composition is.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
What it is made of.

Speaker 9 (13:01):
It's a beautiful illustration of why we have not just
one space telescope, but a fleet of them, because every
one member of that fleet specializes in a different kind
of information, contributing a different piece of the puzzle to
the total understanding we have from the fleet as a whole. So,
for example, Old Reliable NASA's Hubble Space Telescope celebrated its

(13:22):
thirty fifth birthday earlier this year, and not too long
after that in July, it looked at three iyeatlists, not
long after we discovered it from the ground. At this
point through i Atlas was about two hundred and seventy
seven million miles from Earth, and what Hubble's images revealed
was a few things. First, a tear drop shaped coma
of dust coming off that solid icy nucleus of the

(13:45):
comet itself. From these data, astronomers are able to more
accurately narrow a few things. Importantly, the size of the nucleus.
We now know it's between that point. Actually we knew
it is between fourteen hundred feet in diameter up to
is large at three and a half miles in diameter,
and Hubble also saw that the Comment was losing dust,

(14:06):
and not just losing it, but losing it at a
rate consistent with other previous sunbound commets that originated from
within our solar system, consistent with the physics that we
figured out from watching those objects. The last thing Hubble
did is that it gave us a better understanding of
the orbit of this object, tell us not just where
it was, but where it was heading, so we could
point other observatories at it, such as the James Webspace Telescope.

(14:29):
We added this to our fleet early in this decade.
We didn't have it when the last two interstellar comments
came around. Now what James Web did and its companion
sphere X, which we only launched at the beginning of
this year, is it added infrared observations. The power of
infrared observations is these are colleagues we can't see. They're
retter than what our eyes can detect, and infrared light

(14:50):
is particularly good at helping us understand the composition of objects.
We can see little molecular fingerprints from the things that
the objects are made of. So with these infrared observations
with James Web and SPHEREx. We detected an abundance of
carbon dioxide gas in the commet's coma and in the
bright cloud of gas and dust surrounding that comet as
approaches the Sun. Those molecular fingerprints I mentioned those are

(15:12):
the little like science waggles you might see in the
top right of these images. We now know from seeing
those science waggles, those fingerprints of those molecules, that the
comet has a nucleus rich in carbon dioxide as well
as the presence of water ice. Now the ratio, like,
we can not just say that these things are there,
we can also say what's the ratio of carbon dioxide
to water and we now know that. We know it's

(15:34):
larger than what we usually see in solar system objects.
But there's a lot of natural explanations for that. For one,
the carbon dioxide is going to kind of bake off
that comment earlier on when it's far away. But there's
other well understood processes that could also explain it. I'll
just to put this in context. There are every time
we look beyond our solar system and we look at

(15:55):
the ratios of carbon dioxide to water, we see whether
it's a star or a planet different ratios than we
see in the Solar System, and that's true for this
comment as well, So it could mean less is the
last theory of why those ratios could be different that ices,
These ices could have been exposed to higher levels of radiation.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
Than commets in our own system.

Speaker 9 (16:16):
Or as I said before, could be that the comet
just formed from a region where carbon dioxide ice was
particularly abundant and different from our Solar System. Other missions
like our Swift spacecraft, which studies X rays and gamma rays,
have also observed the comment. Teams even look back through
data from our Test mission, which was designed to look
at exoplanets, and found observations of the comment as early

(16:39):
as May. That information is helping us understand the commet's
history before it got closer and when those other observatories.

Speaker 3 (16:46):
Pointed at it, once we knew where it was.

Speaker 9 (16:48):
Now that the comment is nearer our relatively speaking, our
planets are, and heliophysics missions have joined in to tell
us more. And now I'm going to turn it over
to my colleague Tom Statler to talk about some of
those new images.

Speaker 7 (17:02):
All right, thanks very much, Sean.

Speaker 10 (17:05):
Before we get started, I just want to remind everybody
of where we are, who is where in this play.
As you saw in the animations while Nikki was speaking,
the Sun, of course, is at the center of our
solar system. The planets are orbiting around the Sun, and
in this case, Commic three i atlass has come through

(17:25):
on a trajectory in the opposite direction and has arrived
at its closest point to the Sun when the Earth
was on the wrong side for us to conveniently observe.
But Mars was on the correct side of the Sun,
and our Mars assets were able to observe the comment,
and also several of our other spacecraft were on the

(17:46):
correct side of the Sun. So the scientific community is
really excited about the commet and about these new observations.
I'm tremendously excited to help share them with you today.
This is a new scientific opportunity, and it's a new
window into the cups and histories of other solar systems.
We're just beginning to learn about these types of objects
and figure out what are the right questions we should

(18:08):
ask about them. Now, let me start by going directly
to what we were able to see at the beginning
of September when Psyche was able to see the mission.
So before that though, in August, we organized a workshop.

(18:32):
We organized a coordination session for the missions across the
NASA fleet that had good opportunities for potentially observing three
I at LISS, so that we could all share observing
plans and knew what was going to be possible with
our assets. I can't emphasize enough now, how thanks to
the cooperation of so many mission teams, we will be

(18:52):
accumulating a wealth of data on this comment that the
science community will be digging into for years.

Speaker 7 (19:00):
Let's go back to.

Speaker 10 (19:02):
September and I can show you a sampling of the
images collected by our different mission teams to set the context.
You're going to see a comet that's a small body
with a coma around it, basically a fuzzy blob. Now,
remember space is big, nothing is ever really as close
as you like, and all of these observations are very,
very difficult. It's a little bit as if our NASA

(19:25):
spacecraft were at a baseball game, watching the game from
different places in the stadium. Everybody's got a camera and
they're trying to get a picture of the ball, and
nobody has a perfect view and everybody has a different camera. Now,
let's return to September and see the first images from
the Psyche spacecraft. NASA Psyche mission acquired four broadband black

(19:46):
and white images of the comet over the course of
eight hours on September eighth and ninth, twenty twenty five.
The comment was about thirty three million miles from the
spacecraft at that time, and you can see in the
image the large frame where the comet was seen at
different times. Down in the bottom left is a blow
up a stack. In addition of all of those observations,

(20:08):
the Psyche spacecraft is on its way to an asteroid
in the main Asteroid belt that's also named Psyche, and
these images were the first captured from this perspective. Now,
if you think in that lower left you're not seeing
very much, just wait a minute. You'll see more now.
The following week in September, the Lucy spacecraft observed the

(20:29):
comet from the opposite direction.

Speaker 7 (20:31):
So let's take a look at the Lucy image.

Speaker 10 (20:34):
This is another broadband black and white image made by
adding up a series of individual exposures that were taken
on September sixteenth. Lucy is on its way to study
asteroids that share Jupiter's orbit around the Sun, called the
Trojan asteroids. Lucy was two hundred and forty million miles
away from three I Atlas, which is circled in the center.
When it's high resolution lo lowery camera caught the comet,

(20:58):
you can see the comet's coma, the footy halo of
gas and dust surrounding three Iatlis, and its tail, a
smudge extending to the right of the comet. If you
were the Lucy spacecraft looking at the comet from this angle,
the Sun would be a little bit over your left shoulder,
and so the comet tail is pointing away from the Sun,
as we've seen many times before in Solar System comets.

(21:20):
For scale, this image spans about one third the width
of the full Moon as you'd see it on the sky.
Of course, at the distance of the comet, that's a
much much larger region of space than the Moon. Now,
this looks a little different from the Psyche image. Part
of that is because the cameras are different, and part
is because of the ways the Psyche and the Lucy
teams decided to show their images.

Speaker 7 (21:42):
But also it's.

Speaker 10 (21:43):
Because we're seeing the comet from different directions. Seeing a
comet's coma in different lighting geometries with the Sun coming
from different directions is one of the key ways to
learn about the physical properties of the dust that's been
launched off its surface. And I want to emphasize that
you do not get these views unless you have spacecraft

(22:04):
farther from the Sun than the comet is so that
you can see it backlit. We could not get this
view from the vantage point of the Earth. So combining
the data from Lucy Psyche and Earth based telescopes, scientists
are hoping to better understand both the three dimensional structure
of the comet and the nature of the dust. It's
a rare opportunity to compare ancient dust from a distant

(22:28):
Solar system to that from our own. Now, let's go
to the next picture from the Maven spacecraft at Mars.
Beginning at the beginning of October, three IAT lists passed
within twenty million miles of Mars, which gave ours Marius
spacecraft an opportunity for a close up. And earlier you
saw the image that ahmade shared from our Mary's reconnaissance orbiter.

(22:50):
Maeven is another Maris orbiter that has been studying the
Martian atmosphere since twenty fourteen. Now, this picture is not
a direct picture of the comet itself. It's a spectrum.
You're seeing the science wiggles that Shaun was just talking about.
This is some of those science wiggles where the instrument,
the spectrograph, the ultraviolet spectrograph on Maven, has looked at

(23:14):
the comet and also split up the ultra violet light
according to color. So you're seeing three different bands in
this image. On the right, you're seeing emission from hydrogen
gas in the atmosphere of Mars. In the middle, there's
a fainter band indicating that's coming from a hydrogen gas

(23:34):
in interplanetary space. And on the left, that blob is
the signature of hydrogen gas coming from comet through i Atlas.
It's a little blob rather than a big streak because
the comet is a small object in the sky reled
to great, big, gigantic Mars and interstellar space. That fills
the entire field of the instrument. That definitely tells us

(23:57):
first of all, that the comet is there. If there
were no comet, there would be no little blob on
the left side of the image.

Speaker 7 (24:04):
But it's also telling us.

Speaker 10 (24:06):
It's one of the many ways that we're able to
discern the chemical composition of three iatlists, and this particular example,
it's showing us the hydrogen gas that's coming off of
the nucleus. Now, Naven's observations, combined with the earlier observations
by Swift and Web that Sean spoke about, will help

(24:26):
determine the water production rate how much water vapor is
released from the comet when the comet is worn by
the Sun, which provides insight into the formation of the
comet and its journey through our galaxy. Now, the European
Space Agencies Agency and NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory or SOHO,

(24:46):
also successfully imaged the three iatlasts from October fifteenth to sixteenth,
after it had passed Mars, and SOHO spotted the comet
crossing its field of view from approximately two hundred and
twenty two million miles away, or more than twice the
distance of Earth from the Sun. COMA threeiye AT list
was expected to be too faint for SOHO to see,

(25:08):
but this result was made using detailed image processing and overlaying,
or we call it stacking. Subsequent telescope images. This image
highlights the value of spacecraft and instruments designed to look
directly toward the Sun, as Nicki was saying before, not
only to study the Sun, but also to have the
ability to see other objects crossing, in this case, behind

(25:31):
the Sun from the telescope's point of view. You'll be
able to see the rest of the images on our
threeiat LISS website go dot NASA dot gov slash three
I dash atlas, and there will be more to come.
Not all of the data have been downlinked yet through
NASA's Deep Space Network, and there are more observations still
in work. And also it's a long way from where

(25:55):
we are today seeing the initial images to then making
sure that they are accurately calibrated and processed to do
science with, and then doing the analysis, combining the data sets,
understanding them, and finally producing the scientific understanding the knowledge
of what this all means, which which will be published

(26:15):
in peer reviewed scientific journals. The answers will come later on.
We are still at this phase, very much in the
state where we're figuring out what are even the right
questions to ask about interstellar objects. This is a snapshot
of where we are very early in the scientific process. Okay,
back to you Courtney.

Speaker 5 (26:35):
All right, thank you all for your opening remarks.

Speaker 4 (26:37):
We'll go ahead and start the question and answer portion
of this event. Just a reminder to our media on
the phone bridge to press Star one to enter the
queue and ask your questions. We'll take our first question
from the phone bridge from Marsha Dunn with the Associated Press.

Speaker 11 (26:53):
Yes, Hi, I'm based on your latest observation. What more
can you tell us about the potential shape of the comet?
Can you find tune any more on how big or
small it might be origin all that sort of thing.

Speaker 10 (27:10):
Thank you, Thanks for that question. There's a lot of
territory to cover there, so let's see what I can do.
The size of the nucleus still has yet to be
pinned down. The best data are still from the Hubble
observations that Sean was talking about, So we're still right
now in that range of somewhere in the vicinity of

(27:33):
a couple of thousand feet to a couple of miles diameter.

Speaker 7 (27:36):
But we'll get better on that one.

Speaker 10 (27:39):
The shape of the nucleus is also difficult to pin
down because generally we're not resolving it in our observations.
It's obscured by the dust, and especially it's obscured by
the reflected sunlight off of the dust in the inner
part of the coma. But what observers from the ground
have been able to do is observe the brightness of

(27:59):
the center of the comment over time to see if
there's a modulation of that brightness, that would be an
indication of rotation. And it's very difficult to discern. So
what it's looking like so far is that there's there's
not a big The shape of the incuaces is not
very far from being around. It's not it doesn't seem

(28:20):
to be a big at least, we're not seeing signatures
of a very elongated object. Yet there's a lot still
to come there. I think you're also talking about origin.
It's It would be great, It would be fabulous if
we could trace back the incoming trajectory into the Solar
System and trace that back and figure out where it

(28:42):
came from. But things are not quite so simple. Our galaxy,
as Sean knows, is a big and complicated place, and
the Sun and all the other stars in our galaxy
are in orbit around around the center of the galaxy,
and so three I Atlas has been in interstellar space
for a very long time. There is circumstantial evidence, given

(29:03):
how fast it has come in to our solar system,
that it came from some very old population of solar
system around a very old star. Quite possibly. We can't
say this for sure, but the likelihood is it came
from a solar system older than our own solar system itself,

(29:25):
which gives me goosebumps to think about, frankly, because that
means the three I Atlas is not just a window
into another solar system. It's a window into the deep past,
and so deep in the past that it predates even
the formation of our Earth and our son.

Speaker 4 (29:43):
All right, we'll take our next question from the phone
bridge from Bill Harwood with CBS.

Speaker 5 (29:55):
Bill, if you're talking, we can't hear.

Speaker 12 (29:56):
You ever again, so horrible again, can you hear me?

Speaker 5 (30:01):
We have you loud and clear.

Speaker 12 (30:03):
Okay, Thanks, Sorry about that. You know, I mentioned the
rumors that were, you know, kind of scarying around about
this thing in the week leading up to this briefing today.
I have two questions for anybody who care to answer.
One is, did any of you seriously did you take
seriously the proposition from some that just could be an
alien spacecraft. I doubt you did, but I'm asking the

(30:26):
question anyway. And number two, is there any evidence you
see in any of the data you have that would
sit an explanation like that, or, as far as you're concerned,
as all of the data say conclusively if this is
simply a comment that happens to be passing through the
Solar system.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
Thanks, so I'll take that one, Bill, and thanks for
the question.

Speaker 8 (30:47):
We love all of the different science and all of
the different kind of hypotheses into what these things can be.
You know, when you start seeing something, you just got
to point. You know, it's natural to wonder what it is.
And we we actually love as am It said. We
love that the world wandered along with us, and that's
such a cool thing. We certainly were able because of

(31:10):
the measurements that Sean described from the astrophysics telescopes that
immediately turned on this object once we found it.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
And even you know, I was interested.

Speaker 8 (31:20):
I just learned that we'd actually gone back and actually
seen it before we even found it, so that was
super cool.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
I just heard that from Sure.

Speaker 8 (31:28):
But you know, we were very quickly able to look
for sort of you know, the easiest thing to do,
I'll put it in a different way is if you
if you understand comments pretty well and you understand asteroids
pretty well, you kind of know the signatures that you're
looking for, and so you can sort of look for
those quickly and tick them off and say, yep, it
really does behave like a comet. The interesting thing that

(31:49):
you know, Tom, I know if I give, if I
throw and throw this to him in a second, he's
going to geek out about it. But the really cool
thing about this is the differences because it comes from
somewhere else, and that's why we're so excited about it.
It's only the third time that we've been able to
identify and track something coming from outside our own solar system.

(32:10):
We've long predicted these things occur, and now, of course
we know better how to look for them, and we
now have this amazing Atlas array. You know, we're expecting
we'll find a lot more of them, but it was quick.
We were quick to be able to say, yep, it
definitely behaves like a comet. We certainly haven't seen any
techno signatures or anything from it that would lead us
to believe it was anything other than a comet. But

(32:31):
the super cool thing is not that it's exactly like
all the comets that we see in our solar system.
It's the differences that are so tantalizing for us as
we and you know it gives me goosebumps too. It
could be from something that existed before our own solar system.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
That is so cool.

Speaker 8 (32:49):
It's from something that predates even our own star. Yep,
it's gonna look different because it didn't come from our
solar system. And that's what it so magical. You want
to geek out a little bit tough.

Speaker 10 (33:03):
You were geeking out so expertly nicky to begin with,
So that was that was fabulous, But that's exactly right.
I mean objects from things from other places, we naturally
expect them to be different from our own homegrown variety.
And I like to imagine if you, you know, if
you're fortunate enough to have grown up in Hawaii and

(33:23):
you only drank ConA coffee, you love your ConA coffee,
and then somebody says to you, well, g have you
tried Sumatran. You're going to say, well, do you expect
it to be different? And they'll say why don't you
try this? And you try it and you say, wow,
that's really different, and you realize, well, I expected this
to be different because it was from someplace else.

Speaker 7 (33:41):
It was a different environment in Sumatra.

Speaker 10 (33:43):
Now, does that one sip of coffee tell you everything
about the weather and Sumatra and the soil and the
people who harvest the coffee?

Speaker 7 (33:53):
Bless them? Of course not.

Speaker 10 (33:55):
But it's but it's different, and yet it's still coffee.
And that's what we have in this case. We have
a cometary body. It behaves, It resembles the homegrown comets
that we have in our solar system, and yet it's
excitingly different in particular ways. It does the same thing
comet do. Commets do. It evaporates carbon dioxide gas. It

(34:16):
evaporates water, but there it's evaporating more carbon dioxide compared
to water. So that's a very interesting thing. Comets evaporate
dust and the dust is broken down. The minerals are
broken down by the ultraviolet light of the sun. And comets.
We know comets put out nickel, they put out iron.

(34:36):
That's what comets do. This particular one is putting out
more nickel than iron. That's really interesting, really remarkable and
something to be studied in the future. So we're always
interested in new ideas. We're always interested in new suggestions.
And all ideas are good when they're born. But those
that stand the test of time, those that stand up

(34:58):
to test, and those that are supported by the other
are the ones that survive.

Speaker 4 (35:02):
All right, we'll take our next question on the phone bridge,
and that one comes from Matthew Glasser with ABC.

Speaker 13 (35:12):
Good afternoon. Thank you for doing this. Tom mentioned that
the angel will come in time. I'm curious about what
are some of the hopes that we might discover from
this comment, What might to tell us about our planet,
about our sources, about the universe. Are the key things
you're looking for as you start to analyze this data,
and are you excited about anything in particular when it
comes to better understanding how things are working out there?

Speaker 7 (35:36):
Sure? I can take that.

Speaker 10 (35:40):
Every new object we discover is a new piece in
the puzzle. What we're trying to do always is to
understand the universe. That's part of the NASA mission is
to understand the Solar System, understand the universe, understand the
origin of planets, the origin of life, and that is
a huge question and we get a little bits, little

(36:01):
clues to parts of that puzzle, and we start trying
to put that puzzle together. We have gained tremendous amount
of information from hundreds of years of astronomical observation and
from decades of insitu spacecraft observation. Has revealed our planets
as actual places, not just points in the sky that
you could barely see with your own eyes. We've learned

(36:21):
about commets and asteroids, and we're beginning to put together
a picture of how those how all of those planet
forming minerals and planet forming ices came together to form
our planets, and how our Solar System changed over time.
Just one example, we get a fascinating clue from the
objects like Pluto that we've been discovering since the nineteen nineties.

(36:45):
The trans Neptunian objects, the way they are distributed through
space in the outer Solar System show us clues to
how the orbits of the major planets may have changed
over time in the early Solar System. A fascinating thing
and questions that we would never have thought to ask
before we knew about these Transceptunian objects now interstellar objects.

Speaker 7 (37:05):
Like I said before, our.

Speaker 10 (37:06):
New windows and it's windows that we've never even looked
out of before. So what we're going to find is
way too early to predict. But I think we're getting
a hint.

Speaker 14 (37:16):
Of the breadth the wide spectrum of conditions that existed
in different parts of the galaxy, in different solar systems,
where the compositions may the elemental abundances the mineral abundances may.

Speaker 7 (37:29):
Have been very, very different.

Speaker 10 (37:31):
It'd be a different picture if we were seeing the
first three interstellar objects and we'd say, gee, those look
exactly like our homegrown comments. That would have been really interesting,
and we would have said, well, maybe our galaxies are
boring place, because every place is the same. What we're
seeing with this is not every place is the same.
That's a good thing. Lots of places to explore, and
they will be different if we ever managed.

Speaker 3 (37:53):
To get there.

Speaker 7 (37:54):
Yea.

Speaker 9 (37:54):
I think of these as frozen fossils from their moments
of formation, including the things in and now from beyond
our solar system, or in some cases we point our
telescopes at other debris disks, which is just a whole
system full of these small bodies. And so now what
this will let us do is tell that story in
a broader context between the detailed and large library of

(38:17):
data we have on those origins of our own solar
system and how volatiles were delivered to make life possible
here on Earth, combined with that big picture of other systems,
of the dust spread throughout those other solar systems, and
now with this visitor that got frozen in time from
somewhere beyond our solar system, and that small picture of
what that was like on that form.

Speaker 8 (38:39):
And the fact that, I mean, I love the sort
of thought of it as that frozen fossil of almost
frozen time capsule. We're kind of privileged. I mean, it's
come into our solar system, our sun. We know, we
think it hasn't seen a star for a long time.
So it's actually warming up and giving us more information.
It isn't just about a frozen object coming through and

(39:02):
us sort of saying, oh, look there's a frozen object
moaning through, but as it's almost waking up and showing
us its composition, and that's allowing us to be able
to do this great science. If it had just remained
frozen all the time, we wouldn't know much about it.
But it is the sort of it's rendezvous with our
star that is allowing us to really do this amazing science.

(39:22):
And that to me is it makes me feel almost
privileged to actually be able to unlock the secrets. As
as this commentary, cometary object is coming around and rendezvousing
and interacting with our solar system.

Speaker 5 (39:37):
All right, let's head over to social media.

Speaker 4 (39:39):
Nina on x asks will it hit any planets in
our solar system?

Speaker 8 (39:45):
No, it will not, And you know, I think if
you obviously we're not going to run it again, but please,
you know, go online, take a look at go dot
as dotv slash three I dash atlas and take a
look at that the trajectory.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
I kind of talked through it briefly.

Speaker 8 (40:02):
Tom talked through it, and you can sort of see
where those planets are. And remember this, even though it's
exciting and it's coming through, it's a space is huge,
as both Sean and Tom talked about, and so the
probability of it actually hitting anything is super super small.
You have to have all these things aligned to actually
be able to do it. But certainly the objects in

(40:22):
our solar system will be just fine.

Speaker 4 (40:26):
And we have another question from social media from astronomyam
they ask what makes comment three i at lists so
different and intriguing compared to the other interstellar comments.

Speaker 10 (40:37):
Tom the other interstellar objects. We say interstellar objects because
not all of them were comments. So the first one
was discovered in twenty seventeen. That was one I O
Muamua that behaved very much like an asteroid, again a
little bit like three i AT and less a very
interesting asteroid in some ways, different from the asteroids we're

(40:59):
accustomed to see in our Solar system. For one thing,
it was seemed to be very, very elongated, and while
it was inactive, it seemed to be an inert, mostly
rocky object. It did show indirect indications that it was
evaporating gases in some way.

Speaker 7 (41:18):
It wasn't around long.

Speaker 10 (41:19):
Enough for us to get really, really comprehensive long duration
observations and understand exactly what it was doing. It was
the very first one. We saw it for a short
time when it was on its way out, in fact,
and so we didn't get a great view of that.
The second object, two I boor us Off, discovered in
twenty nineteen twenty nineteen, behave it was a comet.

Speaker 7 (41:43):
It was definitely a comet.

Speaker 10 (41:44):
It behaved in a lot of ways like our homegrown
solar system comets. In many ways, like three I Atlas,
its properties were more in line with what we're used
to seeing, and the comet observers regarded it is very
much akin to our solar system comments, although in some

(42:05):
ways a little bit at the edge of what we're
used to seeing. Three I Atlas is in a lot
of ways like two I borisoff, but a bit more
out there in terms of things like the carbon dioxide
water ratio.

Speaker 4 (42:19):
All right, Svetlana on LinkedIn asks will the observational data
from this campaign be available for open analysis?

Speaker 8 (42:26):
Absolutely every piece of NASA data we are delighted to share.
We've had open data policy and NASA for a long time.
We make a big effort not just to release the data,
but also to make sure it's usable so you can
get the tools and things to actually analyze the data
as well. And we invite everybody to look at this

(42:48):
comment with us. If you're able to take your own
images through like citizen science programs, we love that too.
We love everybody to be sharing in the joy of
NASA science as we take every opportunity to take advantage
of these incredible visitors to our solar.

Speaker 9 (43:05):
System, and that citizen science campaign that includes work that
citizens help us to identify small bodies in our solar system.

Speaker 3 (43:12):
And so if you.

Speaker 9 (43:13):
Really want to get engaged beyond just looking at the data,
you can help us generate new data and find other
objects for.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
Us to study.

Speaker 8 (43:19):
Yep, the big big one a sola. Soho a big
big comment. Find a big comment tracker. So many of
those comments discovered by our citizen and scientists.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
So keep those, keep those observations coming.

Speaker 4 (43:33):
All right, we'll head back over to the phone bridge.
Our next question comes from Ken Chang with the New
York Times.

Speaker 15 (43:40):
All right, thank you, This is for Tom and Ninki.
One of the measurements may so far, what is uniquely
different about this comment other than the projective of course?
And two since peric healing, it looks like it's your
multiple jests as wanted to could talk about that in
the speculation and that it might have exploded.

Speaker 7 (44:01):
Thank you, Yeah, thanks Ken.

Speaker 10 (44:05):
So some of the some of the differences I already
mentioned is the ratio of the carbon dioxide water ratio
the nickel iron ratio. Also, there were ground based observations
noting that the polarization of the light reflected off the
dust was also unusual, So that's telling us some interesting

(44:26):
things about the dust. There are other indications that the
physical properties of this dust, maybe the size, the grain
size distribution might be different from the sorts of things
that were used to the appearance of a Sunword tail
early on in the trajectory was part of that, an
indication that the dust was being pushed off the commet

(44:49):
on the on the Sunword side, and then it took
a while for the solar radiation pressure to push.

Speaker 7 (44:53):
It back the other way. That's been seen before in
other comets, but not very often.

Speaker 10 (45:00):
And I'm sorry, Ken, what was the second part of
the question. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the jets right, So seeing activity, uh,
seeing more activity are in the intercoma around the nucleus
right around the time of perryhalium when it's being warmed
most intensely is something that happens frequently. That's something the

(45:23):
combat observers are going to be very very excited about.
It does take some time to figure out because it
hits time for the actual event that happens on the
surface to propagate out to a distance where you can
see it with a telescope, but people are going to
be mapping what.

Speaker 7 (45:39):
Jets there are.

Speaker 10 (45:40):
It doesn't necessarily mean there was an explosion. Jets can
also just mean there are particularly active areas on the
surface of the comet where more volatile stuff is evaporating
in that one spot than elsewhere and jetting out. We
saw this a decade ago with the ESO Rosetta mission

(46:02):
at Comet sixty seven P. It got up close and
personal with the nucleus and saw frequently that there were
jets coming out from specific places on the nucleus of
the commets. So that could very well be what's going
on here. Can't tell for sure, but that's the sort
of thing we've seen before.

Speaker 9 (46:20):
The other thing, I just want to say that we're
expecting to see as more stuff gets thrown off. This
combat in these jets is at those warmer temperatures, additional
things can bake off of, additional gases can bake off,
and so we do expect the composition of the coma.

Speaker 3 (46:37):
To potentially change or those jets to change over time.

Speaker 9 (46:39):
And looking at the details of what other molecules we
detect beyond the carbon dioxide and water we mentioned, is
also going to be interesting especially for that sort of
like what was the area in the ara, what was
this stuff made of in the area it was made
like long long time ago.

Speaker 4 (46:55):
Our next question is from David Chandler with Sky and Telescope.

Speaker 16 (47:02):
Yes, a couple of things. Have you any of these
observations showing you anything about any non gravitational accelerations at
this point? And also can you say a little bit
about coming attractions, What observations are in the pipeline that

(47:22):
have been made but not released yet. I think the
MRO high.

Speaker 17 (47:26):
Rise observations that has that been released yet, and what
else is there that's either in the can and waiting
to come out or observations that will be made over
the coming weeks as the object comes closer to Earth.

Speaker 10 (47:42):
I can answer some of that about the non gravitational accelerations.
This is something that we look very closely at for
every comment because that's always something that happened. And just
to back up to explain what the question is is
that as commets evaporate, they are blowing off gas, they
are blowing off dust and everything. Every time something gets

(48:04):
pushed off the comet that acts like a little rocket
engine at that moment. And pushes in the other direction,
and so it's very very common to see comets have
subtle changes in their orbits as a result of these
little rocket forces just called non gravitational accelerations.

Speaker 7 (48:21):
So this is being monitored very closely.

Speaker 10 (48:23):
I spoke to our orbit determination team of the Jet
Promotional Laboratory earlier this week, and what they said is
that this is being monitored. There are some changes to
the orbit, but the uncertainties are still fairly large. It's
difficult because we can't see the nucleus directly. It's difficult

(48:45):
to get a very very precise track on exactly where
it's going. But so far the non gravitational accelerations have
been very much on power with the sort that we
see in Solar System commets.

Speaker 9 (48:58):
In terms of future observation, and you know, this is
a situation or because this is only the third time
we've had an opportunity to look at an object like this,
everyone that is in.

Speaker 7 (49:08):
Control of a telescope wants to.

Speaker 9 (49:09):
Look at look at it because it's a fascinating and
rare opportunity. I know that our colleagues from the Keck
Observatory have looked at it. I believe that we're going
to look at it again and with JBST in December.
We have some other ground based facilities that are giving
us additional compositional information as those additional molecules.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
Take off of three I at lists. Those are the
things I'm aware of.

Speaker 9 (49:29):
There's probably a lot more that I'm not because, like
I said, like every astronomer wants to get data on
this thing because it's such a rare opportunity.

Speaker 8 (49:36):
Yeah, and the high rise image that you asked about
specifically kind of rolled that out at the beginning, So
please please take a look at at that image. I
think you know, Sean is not bragging a lot on
what these astrophysics salascope I don't why, but you know,
because we are able to look at it and infra
red with the James Webspace Telescope, that will be the

(49:57):
last time we can see to comment. So as it is,
as as it is exiting the Solar System and getting
further and further away, the James Webspace helscot will actually
be able to track it longer than anyone else, partly
because it's of its ability to kind of look long
and deep rather than sort of a cross and wide
and the fact that it looks in the ultraviolet, so

(50:17):
sorry in the infrared, so it can kind of see
the dark objects, and so I'm really excited about just
sort of you know, tracking it to the very end.
Also noted we're downlinking data from missions. I mentioned Parkasolo
Probe because I just heard before we came on that
we've got some data, and we've seen the comment and
I haven't had time to look at the data yet,

(50:37):
but all of those things are coming up as we
are getting getting more and more data coming down to
us from those missions. And then as both Sean and
Tom talked about just really making sure we're sharpening up
those images and really you know, making sure they're calibrated.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
Right now, we're putting out almost the raw images.

Speaker 8 (50:55):
We're putting out things quickly so everyone can see them,
but we'll take some time and do and you know,
real sort of deep looking into those and do some
more of the spectroscopy. Tom showed a really great example
of kind of looking through the atmosphere of mass taking
taking take out that hydrogen, take out the hydrogen from
our solar system, and then let us look at the

(51:16):
hydrogen that's coming from the comics We'll be doing a
lot more of that as we move move on to
do great things with NASA science.

Speaker 4 (51:23):
All right, that's a great lead into our next question
on social media. Elijah on x asks what kind of
processing were the images subjected to and why did they
need it.

Speaker 9 (51:34):
That the images that were released received in the sort
of standard processing that we do between the raw data
that comes down into a telescope that as Nicky said,
you know, we need to make sure for scientific accuracy
that they're calibrated against the other observations and we account
for anything that the telescope is doing in that moment,

(51:56):
and so that there's it would be our standard set
of calibrat and normalizations for a object of this type,
which is to say a comment.

Speaker 10 (52:05):
I can add a little bit more to that. As
Nicky said, our desire was to get these images out
to the public as quickly as possible, and so there
are some image artifacts in there that you'll see, and
I can specifically, I can speak to the lucy image
that you saw previously. If you look at the comet,
you'll see some blobs around the comet. The little blobs,

(52:27):
faint blobs around the comet are not real. It came
from the fact that in order to get this particular
view it was necessary this backlit view. The team had
to turn the spacecraft to face more towards the sun
than it generally does, and so that means some part
of the spacecraft were in the sun and some of

(52:49):
that bright the sunlight reflected off parts of the spacecraft
got into the camera and that resulted in those little blobs.
So that's an example of processing that has yet to
be done to figure you're out exactly what that scattered
like contribution was and remove that from the image so
that what we show in the image is entirely what

(53:09):
was there in the sky and not something just made
by sunglints off the spacecraft hardware.

Speaker 8 (53:15):
Yeah, and sometimes I think you showed the SOHO image
where we actually stacked a couple of images because a
single image you wouldn't be able to see it, it
will be too faint. But if we stack a couple
of images together, then you can actually start to really
make out what that comment looks like.

Speaker 4 (53:31):
Okay, Next, Gail on Facebook asks how can an object
like three i at lists come from so far, moving
as fast as it is and not hit.

Speaker 8 (53:39):
Anything Orbital dynamics, and space is really really huge, and
so you know, it is amazing to think about just
how big the even our Solar system. And so to
give you the Voyager spacecraft, Voyager one is now one
light away from Earth, which means when we send a

(54:02):
command or we send a you know, a photon from Earth,
it takes a full day for that photon to arrive
at Voyager. And Voyager is only just outside kind of
what we think of as the edge of our Solar system.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
And so space is vast.

Speaker 8 (54:19):
Yes, yes, this thing is moving quickly and yet it
came from outside our Solar system. But you know it
really the probability of it actually hitting something is so
small because everything has to align.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
It's also not quite in the ecliptic plane.

Speaker 8 (54:33):
It's not quite in like the our normal If you
think about sort of looking side on at our solar
system with the Sun and then you put the planets
kind of in a row. Normally everything sort of orbits
in this plane. This is slightly tipped, not unusual because
it's not gravitationally bound to our Sun, but it's slightly tipped.
That makes the probability of hitting it almost even even greater.

Speaker 10 (54:56):
If I can play with a scale model source if
you want. If you make a scale model solar system
where the Sun and the Earth are one foot apart,
that's about one foot The Sun is a p the Earth,
you need a magnifying glass to see.

Speaker 7 (55:09):
It's so small.

Speaker 10 (55:10):
The entire Solar system will just barely fit in your
house if you squeeze a little bit. And the next
nearest star is over fifty miles away. So they call
it space for a reason. Most of it is space.

Speaker 5 (55:25):
Okay, we'll head back to our phone bridge.

Speaker 4 (55:27):
Our next question is from Brand Inspector with Live Science.

Speaker 18 (55:34):
Right. I wanted to ask about the age of Latonas
you mentioned, there's circumstantial evidence that it's much older than
our solar system. But how can we constrain that age
a little more and what will that tell us if
it is indeed much much older than the Solar system.

Speaker 10 (55:51):
I can start that, but I'm going to pass it
to Sean to talk about ages in the galaxy. So
cutting to the end, the bottom line is it's probably
going to be really hard to get a more precise
figure from one object. I think what we're looking at
in the future as we discover more of these. When
we get to the point where we have maybe a
few dozen of them and look at the distribution and properties,

(56:14):
we may be able to get a better handle on
what the distribution of ages is.

Speaker 7 (56:18):
So what's going on here is that.

Speaker 10 (56:22):
It takes the Sun two hundred and forty million years
to orbit around the center of the galaxy, and we're
doing that with a neighborhood of stars, so we're all
going around the center of the galaxy. The relative motions
between stars in our solar neighborhood is sort of ten
ish fifteen And sorry, I have all these numbers in
my head in metric because that's the way I learned them.

(56:45):
But ten or fifteen ish kilometers per second, So what
is that? That's about twenty five thousand miles an hour,
I think, and three I Atlas is coming through at
a speed of sixty something kilometers per second, So that's
three times fast stir than the average of our local neighborhood,
which is telling us that it's coming from a different

(57:07):
population from what we have generally around us.

Speaker 7 (57:11):
Now, Sean will be.

Speaker 10 (57:12):
Able to clarify the age dispersion relation in our galaxy,
which tells us which has been discovered over the last
century studying stars in the galaxy that the relative speeds
of stars is an indicator of age. Stars that formed
older in our galaxy over time increase their random motions

(57:33):
for reasons that Chaun will explain. And so that's the
circumstantial evidence that makes us think that three i at
lists came from a solar system that had larger motions
relative to our solar neighborhood and is older. But it
is a circumstantial and probabilistic argument.

Speaker 9 (57:53):
So I'm just going to take this uportune to brag
about our telescopes and the James of Space Telescope in particular.

Speaker 3 (57:58):
This blows my mind.

Speaker 9 (58:00):
We have data from galaxies closer to the origin of
the universe, then we have data from rocks closer to
the origin of Earth. Right in other words, like if
you pick up the oldest rock on that we have
from Earth, it is further away from the origin of
Earth in terms of hundreds of millions of years than
the amount of time there was between the origin of
the universe and the earliest.

Speaker 3 (58:21):
Galaxies that jadabst is now observed.

Speaker 9 (58:22):
And that's part of this story of how well we
understand not just the history of our home planet, but
the history of the entire universe that it's a part of.
And now this is just another part of that story
of the local neighborhood that our Solar System is.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
A part of.

Speaker 4 (58:36):
All right, Our last question for today comes from X
and asks if we can see grains of sand on Mars,
how is the clearest photo we can see.

Speaker 5 (58:47):
For three I atlas what we've seen?

Speaker 9 (58:50):
So because we're closer to the grains of sands on Mars, right,
and so this is like the JABST can only get
like these single pixel blobs of the faintest galaxies, the
furthest way galaxies in our universe. And because three Outlasts
is in our Solar System, we can get the images
and the composition information with g Tobst as it got
closer to some of our the planetary spacecraft Tom was

(59:11):
talking about, they can't even see these galaxies, but because
three A Outlists was closer to them than they were
to JW, they got really good images of those of
the object as it pass.

Speaker 10 (59:22):
Right, as you said, we can we can image individual
grains on Mars because we have spacecraft standing on Mars.
But even our closest spacecraft to three iye at lists.
We're still nineteen million miles away.

Speaker 9 (59:34):
And it's going too fast for us to send something
there to like, you know, intercept and get that close
to it.

Speaker 3 (59:38):
So that's just not that we just don't have.

Speaker 9 (59:41):
If we could, we would like we we would be there.

Speaker 3 (59:44):
Up close and getting those grains.

Speaker 4 (59:47):
All right, Well, that's all the time we have for today.
Thank you so much for joining us. Be sure to
follow along with NASA as we continue to observe three
I at lists. Find new images, detailed information and resource
it is by visiting go dot NASA dot gov, slash
three I dash atlas, and by following NASA Solar System
on social media.

Speaker 5 (01:00:08):
Thanks for joining.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
All right, what a show. So what did we learn
from this? Not much, not too much, but we did
get some images. Now were they great? No, but we
got something, so we gotta see on the positive side
of this. There were a few little things that I noticed,
and I'm like, they gotta talk about it. So and

(01:00:36):
I'll make this brief because I took a few notes,
but I was really hoping. I had expectations that some
of the questions would be good. A lot of them
were pretty lame, but there there were like one or
two good ones. Now, what I was really looking for
was how the panelists answered the questions, how their body

(01:00:56):
language was, and how they looked at the panelists, and
if they did any slip ups. Those things are very
important because naturally you might think, oh, humans are really
good liars, they're not. They're naturally they're not very good
at it. So it seems that when they had confident questions,
like the first three were so softball questions, they were upbeat,

(01:01:16):
they were ready to go. They were answering it like
it was nobody's business. But one little detail stook at.
There was a few, but there's one in particular. Nikki Fox,
the only woman on the panel. She spoke very much
with her hands, a level of confidence. However, when sharing
data was brought up, Oh, we'll share the data because

(01:01:37):
we're super transparent, because we're NASA, that was the only
time she wasn't as talkative with their hands. She's actually
moving her rings around a lot, which that was the
only time she did that through the whole ton, but
she was on the panel. That was kind of strange.
Then Tom Statler was definitely the main head that was

(01:02:01):
talking and really giving explanations the coffee tangent he lost me.
I had no idea what that was about. But there
was a few words that stood out to me that
I thought were very strange words to use. One of
them was population. Why would he state that? Another one
was rocket engine forces. He said it twice. The first

(01:02:23):
time he was like, he said it and it slipped.
The second time he mentioned it, he looked at his panel,
his colleagues, and he says in a meta message like
where your body language is kind of giving a message
without saying any words of is it okay if I
use this language. Unfortunately we're not able to see the

(01:02:43):
panel's expressions, but he continued onward with his explanation of
these rocket engine forces. When talking about the non gravitational acceleration,
it just seemed like a very strange word to use. Now,
one more thing that was really interesting. So we know
of three interstellar objects, a Muamua in twenty seventeen, Borisoft

(01:03:05):
in twenty nineteen, and now three I atlas. When he
addressed a Muamua he said it acted like an asteroid.
But then when he mentioned Borisoft, he said it was
definitely a comment. Why didn't you say the word definitely
with a muamua and why did they not say definitely
with three ie Atlas. I found that very very strange,

(01:03:28):
and I think something to really look at. The last
question was good. Practically, I'm paraphrasing, why did the picture suck? Like?
Why the ones that NASA just released to us, why
were they not good? And they explained it, and I
think they gave a valid explanation that our technology is
a little bit too far from three Eye Atlas. Yeah,

(01:03:48):
of course I rolled my eyes, but it's still a
valid explanation. However, Sean made a little slip up and
he said, the images that are released have been processed.
What about damages that haven't been released? What do those
look like? Where's all the where's all the data? That
NASA says they're super transparent and that everything's going to
be on their website because they want us to be

(01:04:11):
on the journey with them, Well, I don't think we'll
ever get that, not anytime soon. I was kind of
hoping low Ki. I was hoping that Avi Low would
be there in person or asking a question or somehow
getting his way in there. But we didn't see that.
But I am expecting to hear some commentary from him

(01:04:31):
very soon as to what he thought about all of this.
But when I throw this on over to you, what
were your expectations were they met? Which they probably weren't.
And I totally understand. And if you could have asked
a question and it was going to be answered, what
would you ask Let me know in the live chat,
let me know in the comments. Overall, from a positive viewpoint,

(01:04:54):
at least we got a media briefing. At least we
got something for them to talk about it publicly. However,
I did feel like I was back in the fifth
grade in a science class. I read in the comments
that it felt very much like PBS, which they were
just kind of giving a background about the day Atlas
and what they know about it, which was to be expected.

(01:05:16):
I think I mentioned that in yesterday's episode of Here's
probably what they're gonna say. They're gonna say the background,
and then they're gonna say it's not a threat, And
that's exactly what happened. The only person that didn't speak
was a myth. He only had his intro speech, but
he didn't answer any of the questions. Actually, his spatial
expression was I don't want to be here. Maybe I

(01:05:39):
read that incorrectly, but that's how I saw that one.
The other one seemed a bit more enthusiastic. Was there
anything that I missed in this short summary that I
gave you. Please let me know again in the live
chat and in the comments as well. I will be
rewatching that stream just to make sure that I catch
everything that was there, not only the words that were used,

(01:06:00):
but also the body language that was being conveyed as well.
Thank you all for catching this live stream. I will
see you again tomorrow at ten am PST for another
UFO news update, and there will also be at two
thirty pm PST mysteries with a history. That is it
for to day. I will see you tomorrow. Be safe

(01:06:21):
and remember keep your eyes on the skies.