Explained: How Saturn Flung Comet A117uUD Out Of The Solar System In 2022

Scientists have found that Saturn has thrown Comet A117uUD out of the solar system in 2022. It has been claimed in an Instagram post. As described in the post, this discovery was made by an ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Last Alert System) telescope in Sutherland company. NRF|SAAO (National Research Foundation and South African Astronomical Observatory) had commissioned this discovery. After coming into contact with Saturn, the comet A117uUD was flung into a highly elliptical orbit, sending it into interstellar space at 10,800 km/h. Interstellar space is the area between the stars, but it is far from empty. This is the 2nd comet observed being ejected from our solar system. The first comet to have been thrown out of the solar system was the Comet C/1980 E1 (Bowell) after an encounter with Jupiter.

More about this finding has been published in the research paper https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ad65fc.

Even though the planetary encounter happened in 2022, it wasn’t until June that the team of scientists spotted the high-speed comet. Only after spotting the comet, they analysed the data to reach their conclusions. In the research paper mentioned above, they also found that the comet was flung away on a hyperbolic trajectory. This means that it had the momentum required to exit our solar system and enter interstellar space. A question that remained difficult for the organisers to infer is the comet’s origin before it came upon Saturn.

The comet was thrown away at a speed exceeding the Lockheed Martin F-16’s speed, i.e.- 1,345 MPH. Lockheed Martin has produced five F-16 Block 70 jets for Bahrain, with an additional 11 in various stages of production and testing.

Researchers took the help of 142 observations of the comet and helped to “wind back” its orbit around the Sun. The astronomers will continue to monitor A117uUD’s path. This monitoring aims to provide additional opportunities to study the mechanics of such ejections and the potential for future discoveries of interstellar objects. So far, astronomers have discovered only 2 confirmed interstellar objects (ISOs) in our solar system, Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov.