3i/atlas Shows Perihelion Burst and Radial-Only Non-Gravitational Acceleration

> For the layman: These plots show a sudden burst of acceleration on the object, and the push points mostly in one steady direction within the orbital plane. A normal comet warms up and ramps its outgassing gradually, and breaking apart would look chaotic with the direction of thrust changing randomly.

> Here we see one short, powerful jet, like a sealed pocket finally venting, so the speed jumps sharply while the path stays in the same plane; it accelerates but it surprisingly doesn’t change direction.

> It resembles what a single thruster would do (what an incredible prospect!), but it can technically still be explained by a natural rupture of volatile ices in an ancient space rock.

Breathless speculation aside, I think it would be extremely cool if we could identify, intercept and sample an extrasolar object at some point in my lifetime.

Solar heating and outgassing on the side facing the sun.

For the fans of the genre, some more speculation by the master speculator himself:

https://avi-loeb.medium.com/post-perihelion-data-on-3i-atlas...