Researchers at SwRI Produced a Mission Concept for Exploring Interstellar Objects Like 3I/ATLAS

This image of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera on 21 July 2025. Credit: ESA/Hubble

A new development study from the Southwestern Research Institute outlines a possible mission that could rendezvous with and explore the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS.

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More Data and Machine Learning has Kicked SETI Into High Gear

For over sixty years, astronomers and astrophysicists have been engaged in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). This consists of listening to other star systems for signs of technological activity (or “technosignatures), such as radio transmissions. This first attempt was in 1960, known as Project Ozma, where famed SETI researcher Dr. Frank Drake (father of the Drake Equation) and his colleagues used the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to conduct a radio survey of Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. Since then, the vast majority of SETI surveys have similarly looked for narrowband radio signals since they are very good at propagating through interstellar space. However, the biggest challenge has always been how to filter out radio transmissions on Earth – aka. radio frequency interference (RFI). In a recent study, an international team led by the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (DIAA) applied a new deep-learning algorithm to data collecte...

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