According to NASA, the object known as 3I/ATLAS not only penetrated our solar system, but also showed strange behavior that defies all scientific expectations, as it developed what looks like an “opposite tail” heading towards the sun instead of away from it, in a phenomenon that scientists have not witnessed before.

This unusual behavior has prompted the United Nations-funded International Asteroid Warning Network to activate a state of emergency and launch an unprecedented global exercise, involving astronomical observatories from Hawaii to Chile in an intense observing campaign.

The International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) works in collaboration with institutions around the world to detect, track and study near-Earth objects (NEOs) and assess their potential collision risks with our planet.

Officials from the International Asteroid Warning Network acknowledged on Tuesday that this object poses “unique challenges” in predicting its path, and decided to add it to the comet astrometry campaign.

According to the statement issued, scientists will carry out a special training exercise from November 27, 2025 until January 27, 2026. Telescopes and tracking systems around the world will focus on 3I/ATLAS to improve methods for determining its precise location in the sky.

Scientific sources said on the “X” platform: “They call this a ‘test of improved astronomical measurement methods’, in other words, this object is not behaving as it should,” and another source added: “When every telescope from Mauna Kea in Hawaii to Chile is synchronized on one object, this is not just training.”

NASA is part of the International Asteroid Warning Network, along with agencies like the European Space Agency, where everyone cooperates in a collective effort to keep Earth safe from nearby asteroids and comets.

It is important to clarify that NASA will not be launching planetary defense missiles against 3I/ATLAS, but rather this important event is being treated more as an advice exchange exercise between astronomers and amateur observers around the world to take better images of this supposed comet.

While scientists have announced that they will not begin the global observing session until late November, 3I/ATLAS is only a few days away from its closest approach to the Sun, before it disappears from view.

Harvard University scientist Avi Loeb has put forward a theory that this surprising “maneuver” is a sign of a spacecraft using the gravity of a large star to change its speed and path.

Before its recent strange behavior near the sun, 3I/ATLAS was likely to approach Earth in December, but skeptics see the activation of the planetary warning system as evidence that government officials fear this object is more than just a harmless comet.

Loeb explained that in space travel, the best time to accelerate or slow down a spacecraft is when it is closest to a large object, as igniting the engine at that moment, what is known as the “Oberth effect,” gives the largest change in speed.

3I/ATLAS is expected to reach its best opportunity for the “Oberth maneuver” within one week, when it will be 126 million miles from our sun.

Whether it is a comet or something sent by an intelligent civilization from elsewhere in the galaxy, astronomers have concluded that it may be massive, with a diameter of more than 28 miles.

Whatever 3I/ATLAS is, it “will likely continue on its original gravitational path and end up leaving the solar system,” Loeb noted in a blog post on Sunday.

Professor Loeb had previously suggested that 3I/ATLAS might be a nuclear-powered spacecraft, after the Hubble Space Telescope revealed an image this summer that appeared to show the object generating its own light.

During its closest pass by Mars on October 3, space probes sent back images that seemed to suggest that 3I/ATLAS was a giant cylindrical object covered in nickel, making it glow green. This has increased speculation that the comet may be an extraterrestrial space probe, especially since human spacecraft use nickel in the same way to protect them from extremely hot rocket exhaust.

Source: Daily Mail