Astronomers were jubilant after confirming our solar system’s first-known interstellar visitor, kindly naming it ‘Oumuamua, which is Hawaiian for first distant messenger.
This is the first glimpse scientist had of an interstellar object, although, a fleeting one. ‘Oumuamua was speeding out of the system before they saw it, making it hard to determine what it was and where it came from.
What was ‘Oumuamua? A comet from another star? A piece of an exoplanet? Or was it a derelict alien spacecraft?
Now outside the range of earthly telescopes, ‘Oumuamua will never be seen again… or is it?
Fast forward to January 2022, and we learn that a team of scientists came up with a rather ambitious proposal… to build a spaceship to chase down ‘Oumuamua, claiming that it could be reached as early as 2047… Calling this ambitious plan Project Lyra…
Project Lyra is a feasibility study of a mission to interstellar objects such as ʻOumuamua, initiated on 30 October 2017 by the Initiative for Interstellar Studies.
It’s worth noting that, so far, astronomers have only discovered one other interstellar visitor, which they call 2I Comet Borisov in 2019. The 2I stands for 2nd interstellar.
In January 2022, researchers proposed that a spacecraft launched from Earth could catch up to ‘Oumuamua in 26 years for further close-up studies.
How do we catch up to them? How could a spacecraft build up enough speed to catch up to ‘Oumuamua? Gravity Asist… When an object traveling in space passes close to a more massive object, it can benefit from a boost in speed. NASA uses gravity assists all the time when they need to speed up or to change the trajectory of spacecrafts traveling on missions through our solar system to reach their targets.
Similarly, ‘Oumuamua itself got a gravity assist as it passed the sun… when it got a temporary acceleration to speeds near 196,000 miles per hour from its average speed as it exited the solar system of 58,800 miles per hour.
To catch up to ‘Oumuamua, the spacecraft would need to travel at speeds of 74,000 to 163,000 miles per hour…
The suggested options for sending a spacecraft to ʻOumuamua within a time-frame of 5 to 10 years are based on using first a Jupiter flyby followed by a close solar flyby at 3 to 10 solar radii in order to take advantage of the Oberth effect or more advanced options such as a solar sail, a laser sail, and nuclear propulsion.
Source: wikipedia, Earthsky
