Intercepting 3I/ATLAS at Closest Approach to Jupiter with the Juno spacecraft
2025/07/29 by Abraham Loeb, Adam Hibberd, Loeb, Abraham +3 · 8 voices · 3 citations
#astro-ph.EP #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.IM
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2507.21402
Abstract
The interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is expected to arrive at a distance of 53.56(± 0.45) million \rm km (0.358± 0.003~au) from Jupiter on March 16, 2026. We show that applying a total thrust ΔV of 2.6755 \rm km~s-1 to lower perijove on September 9, 2025 and then execute a Jupiter Oberth Maneuver, can bring the Juno spacecraft from its orbit around Jupiter to intercept the path of 3I/ATLAS on March 14, 2026. We further show that it is possible for Juno to come much closer to 3I/ATLAS (∼27 million km) with 110 kg of remaining propellant, merely 5.4% of the initial fuel reservoir. We find that for low available ΔV there is no particular benefit in application of a double impulse (for example to reach ∼27 million km from 3I/ATLAS), however if Juno has a higher ΔV capability there is significant advantage to a second impulse with typically a saving of propellant by a factor of a half. A close fly-by might be able to probe the nature of 3I/ATLAS far better than telescopes on Earth.
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Discussions
- Well this is a spectacular paper. A Del V of 3 km/s gets Juno out from Jupiter to 3i/Atlas. Of course, you need at least the total fuel load that the mission was launched with, which was probably used [bsky, 40 points, 8 comments]
- As long as Harvard continues to employ people like Avi Loeb, the idea that being associated with it conveys some sort of authority is just a silly thing gullible people believe. [bsky, 9 points, 1 comments]
- *in Chris Crocker voice* LEAVE JUNO ALONE, AVI [bsky, 6 points, 2 comments]
- Please go to my latest paper with Avi Loeb and Adam Crowl, concerning utilizing the Juno spacecraft to intercept 3I/ATLAS: arxiv.org/abs/2507.21402 @i4interstellar.bsky.social [bsky, 5 points, 2 comments]
- arxiv.org/abs/2507.21402 Yeah, not possible. [bsky, 2 points, 1 comments]
- Intercepting 3I/ATLAS at Closest Approach to Jupiter with the Juno Spacecraft [hn, 1 points, 0 comments]
- #arXiv #AviLoeb Intercepting 3I/ATLAS at Closest Approach to Jupiter with the Juno spacecraft https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21402 3I/ATLAS is expected to arrive at a distance of 0.358±0.003 AU) from Jupi [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- # arXiv # AviLoeb Intercepting 3I/ATLAS at Closest Approach to Jupiter with the Juno spacecraft https:// arxiv.org/abs/2507.21402 3I/ATLAS is expected to arrive at a distance of 0.358±0.003 AU) from J [mastodon, 0 points, 1 comments]
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