Last Sunday, at around 07:30 Moscow time, the interstellar “comet” crossed the psychologically significant border of 300 million km from Earth and now continues to reduce the distance to the planet by about 2 million km per day, scientists from the Laboratory of Solar Astronomy and Physical Heliostat Instruments of the Institute for Space Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences and ISTP SB RAS report on their Telegram channel.
As experts note, the object's approach to Earth occurred mainly through the efforts of the Earth itself, whose orbital motion is now directed almost exactly to the point in the sky where 3I/ATLAS flew.
Earth and 3I/ATLAS will continue to converge their orbits for nearly four more weeks, until December 19. On this date, as mentioned earlier, the distance between them will decrease to a minimum of about 269 million km.
According to scientists, estimates of the closest approach distance have changed several times over the past month, due to the object's notable non-gravitational acceleration, requiring constant orbit recalculations. However, the subject must not pass the next psychological milestone, 200 million km, under any circumstances.
“If this happens, we will be the first to start preparing posters “welcome, gentlemen, aliens”, as always, the scientists in the laboratory do not deny their sense of humor.
