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A Blueprint For Visiting An Interstellar Comet

December 03, 2025
A Blueprint For Visiting An Interstellar Comet
By Evan Gough (https://ift.tt/xfAOKFk)

This illustration shows the ESA's Comet Interceptor mission during a flyby to a long period comet. It's two smaller probes have been launched and are approaching the comet. A new white paper explains how the Comet Interceptor mission could be a blueprint for a mission to visit and interstellar comet that visits our inner Solar System in the future. Image Credit: By ESA, CC BY-SA IGO 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 igo, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=146114448

arXiv:2512.00492v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We describe how the ESA Comet Interceptor mission, which is due to launch in 2028/29 to a yet-to-be-discovered target, can provide a conceptual basis for a future mission to visit an Interstellar Object. Comet Interceptor will wait in space until a suitable long period comet is discovered, allowing rapid response to perform a fast flyby of an object that will be in the inner Solar System for only a few years; an enhanced version of this concept ...



December 4, 2025 at 05:00AM
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