New Space Probe In The Works To Explore Beyond The Solar System

We have sent a total of four space probes beyond the confines of the solar system, with one more quickly approaching the edge. The Voyagers have given us a decent amount of good data about interstellar space, but they weren't designed for it, and it's the same story for New Horizons when it gets out that far. Those probes can only tell us so much. So now NASA has a new mission in the works, though it's still very early, to send a purpose-built space probe out to study interstellar space. The mission, which will hopefully launch in the mid 2030s and will last around 50 years, will involve the probe blasting out quickly (relatively speaking that is) to around 1,000 AU and examining the heliosphere, which is where the sun's influence ends. It's an ambitious mission, and I really hope it actually happens.

First Truly Pristine Comet Discovered

It's more space news this week, as there's been a new study published about Comet 2I/Borisov, an interstellar object that passed through the solar system back in 2019. As if that wasn't unique enough, apparently this comet was completely pristine, in that it had never previously been affected by a star's heat. The scientists who conducted the research were able to determine this by studying the polarization of light emitted by the comet's coma, which was brighter than any other comet save for Comet Hale-Bopp . Hale-Bopp was quite the sight back in 1997, as I can personally attest, and it was also almost completely pristine, with scientists believing that it had only visited the Sun once.

While Hale-Bopp and 2I/Borisov were similarly bright, the polarization of 2I/Borisov was uniform while Hale-Bopp was not, indicating 2I/Borisov hadn't even had that one visit that its predecessor had. It's actually quite the stroke of luck, finding all this out; I can't imagine truly pristine objects come flying through the solar system on a regular basis. In fact, I'm willing to bet we don't see a truly fresh comet in our lifetime. Slightly depressing, but hey, cosmic time scales just work differently.

We've Received Our First Visitor From Another Solar System

Well, when I say we, I mean "our solar system", and when I say visitor, I mean "cigar shaped asteroid". But the point stands! Sort of. Alright, so this isn't the most exciting thing to have as our first official interstellar visitor, but it's still interesting.

Credit: M. Kornmesser/ESO

Meet 1I/2017 U1, or if you want to be a normal person, 'Oumuamua. Yes, that apostrophe is part of the name. It's about 1,300 feet long, made of rock with some metal, is a dark reddish color (that's an artist's rendition above), and has absolutely no coma around it. It's not a weird looking comet.

How do we know it's from another solar system? Well, the whole 'not a comet' thing helps. 'Oumuamua is moving very fast, much faster than any asteroid from our solar system can. Comets from the Oort Cloud can move that fast, but as we've established, this isn't a comet. And in case you were wondering, yes, 'Oumuamua does mean "messenger from afar traveling fast" in Hawaiian. It's very literal.

Unfortunately, 'Oumuamua was detected too late and is moving far too fast for us to learn anything more about it. No spacecraft we have right now could catch up to it. We'll just have to wait for the universe to lob us another cosmic cigar. So for now, we'll have to settle for simply knowing that we've received a visitor from interstellar space.