A rare interstellar comet passes near Mars.. and the Chinese probe captures the event for the first time

In an unprecedented historical event in the record of space exploration, the Chinese probe "Tianwen 1" observed the passage of the rare interstellar comet "3I/ATLAS" near the planet Mars, and documented its crossing with a high-resolution camera, according to the China National Space Administration.

The comet "3I/ATLAS" is the third confirmed object from outside the solar system to reach our direct observation range, following the mysterious object "Oumuamua" in 2017 and "Borisov" in 2019, which has made the new comet a focal point of intense monitoring by global space centers.

China stated that the imaging took place between October 1 and 4, despite the difficulty in tracking it due to its incredible speed of nearly 58 kilometers per second, at a time when it was passing at an estimated distance of only 29 million kilometers from the surface of Mars.

The images that reached the Chinese ground stations clearly showed the nucleus of the comet and its gas envelope extending for thousands of kilometers, in a scientific achievement that solidifies Beijing's advancement in the race for deep space exploration, and provides scientists with a new window to study interstellar objects from outside the solar system.