Scientists think it's possible for a spacecraft to gain enough velocity to catch up with iconic interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, which is currently speeding away from us, by firing its booster rockets during a very close approach to the sun.
If this mission could launch in 2035, the researchers say, it could at minimum catch up with 3I/ATLAS by 2085 at a distance of 732 astronomical units (AU) from the sun. In other words, that's 732 times farther from the sun than Earth is, which is 68 billion miles (109 billion kilometers). For comparison, our most distant active space probe, Voyager 1, is currently only 170 AU from the sun after almost the same flight-time as the proposed mission to 3I/ATLAS.
