Comet A3 Tzuchinshan-ATLAS may never return to the inner solar system

Comet A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, discovered in 2023, has made its closest approach to the Sun.

According to available data, the last time a long-period comet visited our planet was 80,000 years ago.

However, Carl Battams of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, who has led the NASA-funded Solar Comets Project since 2003, argued otherwise.

“A3 has almost certainly never been near Earth before and will not be in the future,” he said.

Battams further explained: “On its way to the Sun, the comet followed a very, very long elliptical path with an orbital period somewhere in the hundreds of millions of years.”

“This place originates far beyond the gravitational pull of our Sun. “So it did not spend its entire existence in the orbit we saw, but was pressed into it, probably by gravity, a long time ago,” he added.

Battams also shared that the comet’s trajectory changed after it passed through its closest approach to the Sun, known as perihelion, on September 27, 2024, shortening its orbital period from hundreds of millions to hundreds of thousands of years.

“In short: I think an alien civilization is more likely to see this comet again than Earth!” – he concluded.

Carl Battams also stated that astronomers face difficulties tracking A3 comets due to their short visibility within the solar system.