Title: “(23) NASA SHUTS DOWN as 3I/ATLAS Reaches Mars ☄️ Latest Images and Updates – YouTube”Video Transcript: “Hey everyone, geoysicist Stefan Burns here. Interstellar object 3i Atlas is now at its closest approach to Mars today, October 3rd, less than 0.2 astronomical units away from the red planet. And this is a critical time period to get observations of ThreeI Atlas from all the different probes that we have surrounding Mars. And well, it just so happens that there is a United States government shutdown in effect at this moment in time. So, a bunch of different websites for NASA and social media pages and everything are all inactive, not being updated. Kind of odd and bizarre. I’m not going to comment on it more than that, but we do have this shutdown interfering with our ability to observe actually what is happening into our interstellar neighborhood and with this object that is the most bizarre of any that we have ever observed. A lot of people think it may be some sort of technology or alien ship. It does have a variety of very weird features to it. The fact that’s so closely aligned to the ecliptic plane of the solar system. The fact that’s traveling so fast at about 60 km per second. It’ll peak at about 68 km/s during its perihelion October 29th and the 30th. And that is of course if it actually gets there. Uh right now we are limited in our ability to observe threei Atlas from Earth because of the glare of the sun. So check that out. This right here is the uh superior conjunction of three Atlas as viewed from Earth. We also have another comet nearby here. This is R2 Swan. I’ve been talking about that. But if we go back in time to today, the 3rd of October, we see that it’s still pretty much blocked out by the glare of the sun. We do have some recent images of threei Atlas taken on October 2nd and also some on September 27th and September 25th, but at this moment in time effectively now it’s going to be really difficult to get images of three Atlas because of the glare from the sun. And so it’s critical that we get these images from Mars and these different probes. Luckily, we also have the European Space Agency. They are going to be taking a variety of observations and images of threei Atlas during this closest approach and for the next couple days. We also have some different spacecraft there. So thankfully we’re not dependent just on United States government here. And in fact we may already have observed three atlas from Mars. So we have Mars Perseverance and this was pointed out to me by someone on Twitter. I’ll link that in the video description. Her name is Drew. And they noticed this streak in the Perseverance images. And well, I took all the different images for that day. This is yesterday, October 2nd. And this is about 9 minutes of data. And we see this thing streaking across the sky. And this is very bizarre because we see the normal uh motion of the stars here. So Mars is rotating. So like just like on Earth, it looks like the sky is moving. And when you perform an exposure photograph, let’s say like 10 seconds or even longer, like a minute, something like that, you will get the stars to streak because it’s capturing that motion over time. And so we see the normal motion of the night sky because of Mars rotation as a vertical uh elongation of these stars. Well, look at this. This thing is clearly not traveling in that normal motion. It’s not some sort of artifact because it didn’t just show up on one image. It showed up on all the images and it’s moving very quickly. This is 9 minutes of data going through here. So, this is bizarre. And you also see that it’s elongation due to the exposure of the photograph is aligned with also the direction of travel that’s going, which really indicates that this is something that was picked up. And we don’t know what this was. This is October 2nd. So it makes sense that this would be three Atlas because of a its speed, b because of its very large size. The minimum diameter estimate now is kind of coales around 5 kilometers. We’ll find out soon with some of these images from Mars if we get them. But it seems very likely that it’s at least 5 km across if not even bigger. I’d put my money on bigger personally because a lot of amateur astronomers have been able to get fairly good images of three Atlas. It seems to be a big object and we see it moving very quickly across the night sky during this closest approach. So, we do have this imagery from the Perseverance rover and this is going to be very low resolution compared to some of the other imagery and observations that we will be able to get from the um different probes surrounding Mars. But this is what’s happening right now. I’m checking all the FTP servers and different data feeds to try to get up-to-date imagery on this as soon as possible. But I have a feeling because of this government shutdown, we’re going to have to wait. And I also just have a feeling that uh a lot of these different groups are going to take these images and they’re going to process them. It’s going to be at least a few days before we get anything. Though, I promise I’ll keep you up tod date. The moment there’s a new release that is critical, I will release a video on it. I’ll also be releasing updates on my Twitter X account. So that’s stfan burns geo. But we do have some other images of threei Atlas for the past week or so. Remember it just got hit by chronal mass ejection around September 25th. So let’s see how it has changed in the past week after that chronal mass ejection if has done so. And these effectively the last images that we’re going to get of threei Atlas as observed from Earth. Here we have the first recent image that we’re going to look at of threeey atlas taken on September 25th, 2025 by Gerald Raymond and Michael Jagger. And this was observed from Namibia, Africa. This is probably the best image of the lot, but it’s the one furthest back in time. And this was right before that coronal mass ejection impact to three Atlas. But here we see it has that green color. This is in the optical band. And we see it also has that anti-tail that’s sunward facing. So still showing a lot of anomalous characteristics and basically showing up very bright and quite large in this image. And it doesn’t have that typical tail that you see with other comets. So there’s a bunch of other comets right now flying around the inner solar system or nearby and they have these super long dazzling tails. Three Atlas does not have that. So something is quite bizarre as it relates to three eye atlas in addition to some of the other factors I talked about its inclination to the ecliptic plane its speed. It’s coming from roughly the direction that we had that wow signal in 1977 only 9° off. There’s a whole bunch of oddities as it relates to this interstellar object. So this is what we have observationally around September 25th. Let’s look at an image that was taken on the 27th, which is after that coronal mass ejection impact. Now, the next two images of ThreeI Atlas were taken on September 27th and also October 2nd by a Mr. Romangh. And this is probably the last good imagery that we’re going to get of ThreeI Atlas. I’ll link to his Twitter X in the video description. Go check him out. Here we have we see the image on September 27th. And so we see some other stars and things here, but this is three Atlas and we see this zoomed up view of it there. So very low resolution, but at least it’s something. And uh it’s, you know, basically we we see that it has this coma. It’s not that large in his view, but it depends on what wavelength of light that you’re looking at. So if you were look infrared, this would show up much much much larger because of that diffuse dusty complex plasma coma surrounding it. where there’s gas and ice and dust grains and ionized particles, plasma that is making up this very large coma that Sphere X image at about 700,000 km across, half the diameter of the sun, that is expected to get bigger and bigger as it gets closer and closer to the sun because the sun is going to be ionizing it more, heating it up more, causing it to op gas more, and then ionize. So, uh, it’s likely even larger than that now. And as it gets close to Mars, we don’t really know how that’s going to interact with the planet. Very likely it doesn’t interact in any spectacular way if it’s just a normal interstellar object. But we really just don’t know what this thing is. I think it’s useful to look at all the different ideas and speculations. At least give them a fair shake before casting them out. I don’t think it’s a comet. I think it’s an interstellar object, something of unknown characteristics. We can’t really just put that label of comet on it cuz it doesn’t have that tail like we’re seeing from A6 Lemon or from R2 Swan which have these spectacular tails. It simply does not have that. So this is September 27th after that chronal mass ejection impact. We don’t see any notable changes to three Atlas afterwards. We weren’t really expecting any. if it did have a long tail, then perhaps a chronal mass ejection impact to threei at Alice could have broken off that tail and then change the structure of it. But because it doesn’t have that, it’s not really that bizarre that it didn’t really change much. The biggest change that I would expect is that it would ionize a bit more and perhaps its coma would expand. Let’s see the latest image that we have from Mr. Romangh on October 2nd. And here we have that latest imagery. Two different views. This is the three raw stacked 60-second exposures, red, green, and blue. We see three Atlas right there. Honestly, I’m quite surprised that we were even able to get any Earthbased observations of three Atlas on October 2nd because it’s effectively now outside the ability to observe being so close to sun. But this seems to be fairly good to me. Even though there’s a lot of noise in the background, this looks legit. Uh we also have then this color uh gradient on it. So to make it a little easier to see in the the zoom in and this is the same image just put a color gradient on it. And so we see that coma clearly around it. And then this is uh likely a more dense coma. Very unlikely for that to be the nucleus itself but clearly showing up quite a bit brighter. So there are layers and structures to this thing. Right? We saw that with the polarization data where there were structures on the outside that had slightly different polarization than those closer in. We see that the coma is very very large. Threei Atlas is just very very anomalous. And that is why it’s so important we get these observations on threei Atlas from all these probes surrounding Mars because a they’ll give us our highest resolution look yet at this interstellar object by a wide margin and b also provide a bunch of supportive evidence and data at the same time. So spectral data and more. But this US government shutdown, it’s really a big unknown whether that’s going to affect things or not. Some people are saying that everything will continue on and that this is deemed an essential mission and that we will get these observations but the websites are basically saying hey no one’s working we basically saying hey no one’s working States workers furoughed government now and the timing is really really coincidence now why we would have these close approach of three Alice with Mars can’t tell you. I don’t think it’s a bizarre that we do have that alignment. effectively. But thankfully, there are not shut down currently, like the what they’re going to be doing today, Atlas. Here we have a graphic that was relates to their goal to observe three Again, I think it’s an interstellar of whether it’s a comet or not is still is that it’s a comet. Whatever. It was in this list here is today, October 3rd, Exom Mars Trace Gas Orbiter will observe as they say, just 30 million kilometers astronomical units. Then it has this afterwards early November ESA’s juice observing three Atlas because Juice system. So we see its orbit right there its perihelion then in this part of its other kind of big question mark. But if continue on its trajectory. It’ll be be fairly close. There’s Venus. This is Venus, by the way. Though it does not Mars, the distance between Venus and measurements from juice and these will is expected to be its most active had time to effectively charge up. The effectively in orbit and be able to they say that we’re not going to really any of this data till probably about there’s a way to get that data sooner. not going to get any of this information And then they’ll continue these be going this way out towards Jupiter Earth. So that is what ESA is playing. will hopefully observe three Atlas that This is by China and the United Arab interplanetary mission to Mars back in instruments and probes. And one of those hope is that they will turn the threei atlas to capture a whole bunch of we also hope that the United Arab Mars mission. and they launched that and the goal. We don’t know when that going to be public publicly accessible. but that’s not always the case. And this data will be put together into to look at because there are going to be that they’re all going to be taken looking at this huge data set that we come to our best understanding yet of that other imagery that was taken by Earthbased observatories, but is further solar system. So it does have different from that chronal mass ejection that heating up. It’s becoming more active. to be absolutely key. So I will keep you looking at all these different FTP imagery and data as soon as possible. So like to stay in the know and not only here on Earth from all angles. So energies, solar activity, space weather, planet, planetary resonances, geometry, forces, and more. I cover all that. Again, I’ve been your host, Stefan of you well. Please take care of video. Interstellar 3i Atlas official earththeevolution.com/store 100% cotton long sleeve shirt with father Lee Burns. So, if you like to get can pick this up. It’s super comfortable and cooler temp”Video Summary:
Here’s a **summary of the YouTube video on 3I/ATLAS and the NASA shutdown**:
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## 🚨 Key Event
– **Date:** October 3, 2025
– **Object:** Interstellar object **3I/ATLAS** (sometimes called ThreeI Atlas)
– **Closest approach to Mars:** Less than **0.2 AU** from the planet.
– **Speed:** ~60 km/s, expected to peak at 68 km/s around perihelion (Oct 29–30).
– **Size:** Estimated **≥ 5 km across** (possibly larger).
– **Current viewing issue:** Too close to the Sun from Earth’s perspective (superior conjunction), so hard to image directly.
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## 🔒 NASA Shutdown Impact
– The U.S. government shutdown has paused NASA’s social media and many website updates.
– This creates a gap in real-time data sharing during 3I/ATLAS’s critical Mars encounter.
– Fortunately, **ESA (European Space Agency)** and other international missions continue observations, so coverage won’t be lost entirely.
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## 🛰 Mars-Based Observations
– **Perseverance Rover (Oct 2 data):**
– Detected a **fast-moving streak** across the sky over 9 minutes of exposures.
– Unlikely to be an artifact: it appeared in multiple frames, moving independently of the background star streaks.
– Strong candidate for 3I/ATLAS.
– Upcoming/ongoing observations from Mars orbiters and landers (ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter, JUICE later in November, and possibly the UAE Mars Mission) may provide higher-resolution data.
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## 🌌 Object Anomalies
– **Not like a typical comet:**
– No long dazzling tail like comets A6 Lemmon or R2 Swan.
– Instead, it has a **green coma** with an odd **anti-tail** (sunward facing).
– **Coma size:** ~700,000 km across (half the Sun’s diameter), expected to grow as it nears the Sun.
– **Weird features:**
– Orbit nearly aligned with solar system’s ecliptic.
– Origin direction only ~9° away from where the **1977 “Wow! signal”** was detected.
– Survived a coronal mass ejection (Sept 25) without much visible change.
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## 📝 Conclusion
– 3I/ATLAS is behaving unlike any ordinary comet or asteroid.
– Classified as an **interstellar object of unknown type**.
– Mars-based probes offer the best chance for detailed observation during this solar-blinded window.
– Public release of data may lag due to the shutdown, but ESA and other space agencies are expected to fill the gap.
—
⚡️Bottom line: **3I/ATLAS is big, fast, and weird.** We may soon get the clearest interstellar object data ever—if politics doesn’t slow down the release.
Do you want me to **contrast this with ‘Oumuamua (1I/2017 U1)** to highlight how 3I/ATLAS is similar/different from the first known interstellar visitor?