{"id":266668,"date":"2025-11-06T14:15:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T14:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/266668\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T14:15:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T14:15:10","slug":"fuzzy-images-of-3i-atlas-at-closest-approach-to-mars-from-the-high-resolution-imaging-camera-hiric-onboard-the-tianwen-1-mars-orbiter-by-avi-loeb-nov-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/266668\/","title":{"rendered":"Fuzzy Images of 3I\/ATLAS at Closest Approach to Mars from the High-Resolution Imaging Camera (HiRIC) Onboard the Tianwen-1 Mars Orbiter | by Avi Loeb | Nov, 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Avi<\/a>\"\"Image of 3I\/ATLAS at a distance of 28.96 million kilometers, taken by the Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter of CNSA. (Credit: Cai Jinman & Zhang Wei, CNSA<\/a>)<\/p>\n

On October 3, 2025, the interstellar object 3I\/ATLAS<\/a> came within 29 million kilometers of Mars. The highest resolution images of 3I\/ATLAS were obtained by the HiRISE camera<\/a> onboard NASA\u2019s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This camera with a 50-centimeter aperture reached a spatial resolution of 30 kilometers per pixel, about 3 times better than the Hubble Space Telescope image from July 21, 2025 (accessible here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the brilliant congresswoman Anna Paulina Lune tweeted the following message:<\/p>\n

Press enter or click to view image in full size\"\"<\/p>\n

This follows a DEFENSESCOOP news report titled \u201cUS government grapples with questions about interstellar object 3I\/ATLAS amid shutdown\u201d, accessible here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While we are all waiting for the end of the U.S. government shutdown and the release of the HiRISE images of 3I\/ATLAS, China National Space Administration (CNSA) released here<\/a> images obtained on October 3, 2025 by the Tianwen-1<\/a> Mars Orbiter at a distance of 28.96 million kilometers from 3I\/ATLAS.<\/p>\n

The Tianwen-1<\/a> orbiter entered Mars orbit in February 2021. Its High-Resolution Imaging Camera (HiRIC), described here<\/a>, employs a primary mirror diameter of 38.7 centimeters, with an inferior resolution relative to the 50-centimeter aperture of the HiRISE camera. The released HiRIC images show the nucleus and a surrounding coma with a diameter of several thousand kilometers. The CNSA researchers generated an animation of the trajectory of 3I\/ATLAS in the Martian sky based on a series of 30-second images, available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s hoping for better images from NASA\u2019s HiRISE in the coming days.<\/p>\n

ABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/p>\n

Press enter or click to view image in full size\"\"(Image Credit: Chris Michel, National Academy of Sciences, 2023)<\/p>\n

Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University\u2019s \u2014 Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011\u20132020). He is a former member of the President\u2019s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of \u201cExtraterrestrial:<\/a> The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth<\/a>\u201d and a co-author of the textbook \u201cLife in the Cosmos<\/a>\u201d, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled \u201cInterstellar<\/a>\u201d, was published in August 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Image of 3I\/ATLAS at a distance of 28.96 million kilometers, taken by the Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter of CNSA.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":{"0":"post-266668","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}