Decryption – It is only the third time that astronomers have detected an interstellar object. According to its region of origin in the Milky Way, it could be a much older object than the land.
For a humanity that never ceases to find new challenges, new horizons to conquer, the observation sometimes has something desperate: it will probably be impossible to go and visit worlds around other stars than ours. In 2017, a first object “Coming from elsewhere” However, was detected in transit in our solar system. Since then, two other interstellar objects have been identified, including the last at the start of the summer. This was discovered on July 1 in Chile by a station in the Atlas program (Asteroid Terresrial Impact Last Alert System, ie “ultimate asteroid impact system”), composed of four autonomous telescopes funded by NASA designed to identify potentially threatening asteroids.
Called 3i/Atlas, it is characterized by its extremely high speed: more than 200,000 km/h. It’s about twice as fast as its two predecessors, the asteroid 1i/’Oumamua and the comet …