When the Oumuamua interstellar object was discovered in 2017, there soon were theories about its composition and origin. Now, it seems NASA is very interested in gathering concrete data.On January 16, 2019, the head of Harvard University’s astronomy department, Prof. Abraham Loeb, gave an interview where he defended his controversial paper that the interstellar object detected by a Hawaii-based telescope could be a spacecraft.Detected for the first time in October 2017, the asteroid Oumuamua was originally given the formal designation of 1I/2017 U1. Astronomers had long awaited the arrival of the first object from another solar system. So they initially gave it the informal name of Rama, after the derelict spacecraft depicted in Arthur C. Clark’s 1973 novel, “Rendezvous with Rama” that was spotted after passing close by the Earth. But given that the interstellar object was discovered by the Pan-STARRS telescope at Haleakala Observatory on the Hawaiian island of Maui, two Hawaii culture experts were consulted. They named it Oumuamua – Hawaiian for “scout or messenger from distant past reaching out to us.” The images taken by the Hubble and Pan-STARRS telescopes were quite faint, so not much could be learned about Oumuamua’s geometry and composition. Nevertheless, the initial…
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OUMUAMUA: What is it? Why is NASA Interested?
