Intercepting 3I/ATLAS at Closest Approach to Jupiter with the Juno spacecraftOPEN ACCESS 

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Abraham Loeb, Adam Hibberd, Adam Crowl

Draft version July 30, 2025

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The interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is expected to arrive at a distance of 53.56(±0.45) million km (0.358 ± 0.003 au) from Jupiter on March 16, 2026. We show that applying a total thrust ∆V of 2.6755 km s−1 to lower perijove on September 9, 2025 and then execute a Jupiter Oberth Maneuver, can bring the Juno spacecraft from its orbit around Jupiter to intercept the path of 3I/ATLAS on March 14, 2026. A close fly-by might be able to probe the nature of 3I/ATLAS far better than telescopes on Earth.

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