For months, astronomers assumed the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS would glide harmlessly past Mars. But fresh analyses from Harvard’s Avi Loeb team and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory suggest otherwise. The trajectory is narrowing, the velocity shifting—and for the first time, the math points to the unthinkable: a potential direct collision with the Red Planet.
Traveling at nearly 87 kilometers per second, 3I/ATLAS is the fastest object humanity has ever observed. Its tail defies the behavior of ordinary comets, pulsing every 17 minutes with bursts of gas so precise they resemble propulsion. Spectroscopic scans reveal metallic signatures and unnatural glimmers in Mars orbit—hints that this may not be mere ice and rock, but something engineered.
An impact would unleash energy equal to millions of nuclear warheads, gouging a crater 60 kilometers wide and obliterating Mars’s satellite fleet. Worse still, debris could scatter toward Earth. Space agencies across the globe—NASA, ESA, and others—are scrambling in quiet urgency. The countdown is on: September 2025 is the critical window, and each pulse from 3I/ATLAS might be guiding it closer.
So the question looms: is this a rogue wanderer of the cosmos, or the first interstellar machine humanity has ever faced?
