The post A Rare Interstellar Object Zooming Through Our Solar System Could Be Fundamental To Planets Of The Future first on TwistedSifter. For some months now, astronomers have been tracking an interstellar object known as 3I/ATLAS. The suspected comet is extraordinary for several reasons.

While NASA's James Webb Telescope and other instruments have already spotted abundant water vapor, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide in 3I/ATLAS's coma, X-ray observations are uniquely sensitive to lighter gases such as hydrogen and nitrogen that are otherwise hard to detect.

Southwest Research Institute's novel Compact Dual Ion Composition Experiment (CoDICE) instrument aboard NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) spacecraft has successfully collected first-light data.