Proposed mission could encounter and explore a future interstellar comet like 3I/ATLAS up close

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has completed a mission study detailing how a proposed spacecraft could fly by an interstellar comet, providing remarkable insights into the properties of bodies originating beyond our solar system. The SwRI project developed the mission design, scientific objectives, payload and key requirements based on previous interstellar object (ISO) detections. Using the recent discovery of 3I/ATLAS, the team validated the mission concept, determining that 3I/ATLAS could have been intercepted and observed by the proposed spacecraft.