Comet 3I/ATLAS will pass at its closest distance from Jupiter today at 15:20 Moscow time.

The final significant event in the eventful life of comet 3I/ATLAS—its closest approach to the Solar System's largest planet, Jupiter—will occur today at 3:20 PM Moscow time. According to NASA JPL calculations, the celestial body will pass the gas giant by 53.6 million kilometers, a huge distance by Earth standards, but an exceptionally close (in some ways, almost improbable) pass by Solar System standards.

The celestial body's current velocity is over 65 km/s. There is no possibility of catching and intercepting an object with such parameters. The only hope is that in 100 or 200 years, if humanity has mastered sublight speeds by then, it will send a research probe in the direction where the celestial visitor disappears, catch up with it, and finally determine its nature. Or it won't find it in the calculated location, which in a sense will also determine the nature of the body even more definitively.

The celestial body will remain within the solar system, if the Oort cloud is considered its boundary, for approximately 10,000 years, although, as previously reported, it will completely disappear from the field of view of modern tracking equipment in the second half of this year.

NASA has not reported any attempt to obtain the final 3I/ATLAS images using the Juno spacecraft operating near Jupiter. However, the satellite's optical equipment is not designed for this type of imagery, so the results would still be disappointing and would only give rise to further suspicions of information concealment. However, it's possible that such images will ultimately be taken—it's worth the wait.

The questions raised in connection with 3I/ATLAS's transit past Jupiter, in particular the possibility of dropping probes (as part of the alien theory), will never be answered. It's impossible to see anything like this from either Earth or Juno, so all sides will remain at their own devices. Overall, there's a clear decline in interest in this celestial body. Therefore, as the object moves away from Earth, it seems everything will inevitably reach a compromise along the lines of "we'll never know anything anyway." For now, let's just wave at the comet. If you imagine waving at an alien probe or spacecraft flying away from Earth, that's okay; it's perfectly acceptable.