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Astronomers race to study interstellar interloper

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125 points bikenaga | 3 comments | 11 Jul 25 15:43 UTC | HN request time: 0.527s | source
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rtkwe ◴[11 Jul 25 17:11 UTC] No.44534650[source]▶
On a similar vein there's Project Lyra which is a theoretical fly-by mission of ʻOumuamua or 2I/Borisov. The proposed trajectories to catch up are pretty crazy with my favorite being the 2030 launch for a 2052 fly-by that uses Jupiter and a close Sol 10 solar radii!) gravity assist to rocket out of the solar system [0].

It will be interesting to see if we've just been missing these extra solar objects. I have doubts we'll actually do a project Lyra style fly-by though. Funding is going the opposite direction and all.

[0] http://orbitsimulator.com/BA/lyra.gif and https://i4is.org/project-lyra-a-solar-oberth-at-10-solar-rad...

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1. api ◴[11 Jul 25 18:59 UTC] No.44535766[source]▶
Rendezvous with one of these would be a good use for a NERVA-type nuclear engine (upper stage, not used in the atmosphere).

Also seems like the thing to do, given that we are finding more than one of these now, is to build such a thing and have it on standby and look for one that's inbound so we can launch at the best window to reach it.

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2. rtkwe ◴[11 Jul 25 19:19 UTC] No.44535940[source]▶
Even with a NERVA engine it's a LOT of work to get to the 26 kmps of an object like ʻOumuamua so you're still at the mercy of planets being in roughly the right locations to provide some gravity assists. I think it would widen the workable solutions but something like the 10 SR assist could work with things we've actually built already.
3. dylan604 ◴[12 Jul 25 00:58 UTC] No.44538364[source]▶
to build a thing would be astonishingly lucky for it be parked in the right place to catch the next one, so where would you park it? seems like it would be better to build a lot of them, and park them through out in various orbits so maybe one of them has a chance to rendezvous