A grand eruption of solar plasma will hit the mysterious interstellar object 3I/ATLAS this week, on Friday, November 21. Researchers from the Solar Astronomy Department of the Space Research Institute (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences shared this information via their Telegram channel. The event, which consisted of registering a plasma ejection on the unseen side of the Sun, occurred on November 17. Currently, the distance between this enigmatic body and the star is approximately 230 million kilometers. Specialists predict that the plasma cloud will reach the interstellar “comet-ship” during the daytime on Friday, November 21, around three o’clock Moscow time. Earlier, at the end of October, 3I/ATLAS had already endured a series of powerful impacts from solar plasma as it moved almost directly behind the Sun. Unlike regular comets, which systematically approach our star, this contact was likely the first time for this visitor from other systems. Subsequently, the object reappeared from behind the Sun with a slightly adjusted trajectory and increased luminosity. On November 18, employees of the Solar Astronomy Laboratory at IKI RAS announced an upcoming NASA press briefing focused on the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS. It is expected that this event will showcase images obtained by the HiRISE camera mounted on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter automatic probe, which orbits Mars. The cosmic body 3I/ATLAS was first discovered on July 1. It was later confirmed to be a comet arriving from a different stellar system. Furthermore, it was possible to determine the approximate age of this object—it exceeds 7.5 billion years, making it 3 billion years older than the Sun.
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