An alien spaceship just passed by. Solar system scientists are going to catch up with it.

In 2017, astronomers discovered an uninvited guest in the solar system: the interstellar rock Omaomo, which is the first time a celestial body from outside the solar system has been observed to enter the solar system. However, some of the strange properties of Omaomo seem to suggest that it is not formed naturally, and some scientists even boldly speculate that it is an alien ship that intruded into the solar system to gather information near Earth. Now that Aomomo has moved beyond the orbit of Neptune, in order to reveal its true face, some scientists have proposed that we should launch a probe to catch up with Omaomo and take pictures of it.

On Oct. 18, the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii spotted a strange object: a cigar-shaped rocky asteroid about 100m in diameter burst into the solar system from the direction of Lyra. This celestial body has a hyperbolic orbital excess velocity of up to 26 kilometers per second (the speed when the distance from the sun tends to infinity). The interaction of celestial bodies in the solar system cannot provide such high kinetic energy. nor can the sun's gravity capture such a fast object. As a result, scientists speculate that Omomo came from outside the solar system. This is the first time that a celestial body from outside the solar system has been found in the solar system.

The uninvited guest of the solar system is named Oumuamua, which means "scout" in Hawaiian. O'Momo 's orbit is not closed ellipse, but open, which means it will not return periodically like Halley's comet. Omomo, which skimmed Saturn's orbit in January 2019, is now estimated to be somewhere outside the orbit of Neptune, heading towards Pegasus. However, some properties of O'Momo suggest that it may not be an ordinary interstellar object, and some scientists even suspect that it is an alien ship. In order to reveal its true face, it is now planned to launch a probe to catch up with Omao in 2028 and take a close picture of it.

Alien spacecraft

So Loeb and other scientists wondered whether the Omo Momo Society would be an aircraft built by an alien civilization. If Omo Momo was built to target the solar system and to collect data from livable areas near the Earth, then the number of such celestial bodies can be reduced to a reasonable range. In this case, Omo's thin and flat shape may indicate that it is a receiver that receives data from probes that have already been scattered on Earth. And it is not driven by the sun to gain power, it is just a side effect of its shape.

Although the idea that Aomomo is an alien ship is not mainstream in academia, the questions surrounding it still arouse astronomers' curiosity. What is Aomomo made of? can it really be driven by light pressure? unfortunately, it is so fast that even the largest telescopes can no longer see it a few months after it was discovered. Now some scientists have come up with a bold idea: launch a detector to catch up with Omao and take pictures of it.

Catch up with ao Momo

The researchers call this scheme the Jupiter Obers Strategy (Jupiter Oberth maneuver). According to the plan, the probe will be launched from Earth in 2028 and then orbit Venus and Earth in turn. The researchers say this will minimize the fuel used by the probe to sail to Jupiter. About four years later, the probe entered the orbit of Jupiter, accelerated the burning of fuel and flew to Omao at a speed of 133200 kilometers per hour under the gravitational slingshot effect of Jupiter. The probe will sail for nearly 18 years after that, eventually approaching Omao around 2050.

The plan sounds eye-catching, but it is unclear whether it will be approved. Every decade, NASA publishes the Ten-year Survey (Decadal Survey) white paper, which aggregates common ideas and priorities for missions in space research. The proponents of catching up with O'Momo 's idea have submitted their proposal to NASA, and they hope to get encouragement from the scientific community. If the plan really works, I hope that in more than 20 years' time, some people will still remember that a strange object suspected of an alien spaceship has intruded into the solar system.