{"id":480648,"date":"2025-10-07T15:12:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T15:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/480648\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T15:12:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T15:12:15","slug":"perseverance-rover-captures-cylindrical-object-flying-close-to-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/480648\/","title":{"rendered":"Perseverance Rover Captures Cylindrical Object Flying Close to Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a>NASA\u2019s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its onboard Right Navigation Camera (Navcam). | NASA\/JPL-Caltech <\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s Perseverance rover captured an unusually shaped object flying through the Martian sky on Saturday \u2014 and it\u2019s not yet confirmed what it is. <\/p>\n

The object was caught by Perseverance\u2019s Right Navigation Camera (Navcam), and chatter about whether the object is an alien spacecraft began online immediately. Alas, scientists are not convinced. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the ongoing U.S. government shutdown means that NASA\u2019s workforce is currently at home, apparently unable to put out a statement about the object. <\/p>\n

However, NASA had been closely following the interstellar comet 3I\/ATLAS \u2014 only the third known object from outside the solar system to be discovered \u2014 and had previously said it plans to use Perseverance to monitor it. <\/p>\n

Furthermore, the date of the photo (October 4) coincides with when 3I\/ATLAS was expected to make its closest pass to Mars. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>NASA\u2019s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its onboard Right Navigation Camera (Navcam). | NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/p>\n

In the absence of any information from NASA, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb wrote a blog post<\/a> explaining that at the time the two photos were taken, 3I\/ATLAS was roughly 38 million kilometers (23.6 million miles) from Mars. <\/p>\n

Loeb did some rough calculations and estimates the cylindrical shape in the sky is approximately 31,000 miles long. But he says that 3I\/ATLAS isn\u2019t that big; instead the comet was elongated because of the camera\u2019s \u201clong integration time.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIn conclusion, the stripe in the Navcam image must have resulted from stacking hundreds of Navcam images over a total time interval of about ten minutes. 3I\/ATLAS would have looked like a circular spot for an individual snapshot, which has a maximum exposure time of 3.28 seconds for Navcam,\u201d Loeb writes. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf the Navcam images represent single snapshots with an exposure time below 3.28 seconds, then the brightness and angular length of the observed source imply that it is not 3I\/ATLAS. In that case, the source might be much closer to the camera \u2014 capable of being smeared into an elongated image with a smaller spatial size and a smaller speed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Futurism notes<\/a> that there should be confirmation soon, as NASA\u2019s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter also got an image of the comet, but that is still unreleased. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>International Gemini Observatory\/NOIRLab\/NSF\/AURA\/Shadow the Scientist
Image Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory\/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage\/NSF NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) <\/p>\n

The interstellar visitor has already been imaged by NASA\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope<\/a> and then a few weeks later by the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograp<\/a>h (GMOS) on Gemini South in Chile, above. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its onboard Right Navigation Camera (Navcam). | NASA\/JPL-Caltech NASA\u2019s Perseverance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[901,60882,159537,790,33747,874,33748,159538,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-480648","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-astronomy","9":"tag-comet","10":"tag-comet3iatlas","11":"tag-mars","12":"tag-marsperseverancerover","13":"tag-nasa","14":"tag-perseverance","15":"tag-perseverancerover","16":"tag-science","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115333532788101918","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}