Hi, I'm Flor Lichten, and you are listening to Science Friday.

Today in the show, a space bonanza, starting with a strange visitor from another solar system.

We put all hands on deck basically to make sure that we were ready to observe this object, pointing every

telescope that could possibly detect it as frequently as we possibly can.

Attention, Earthlings. Our solar system has a visitor. Earlier this summer, astronomers

discovered something odd whizzing past Jupiter, an interstellar

object, an object from another solar system.

Scientists named it three-eye Atlas.

It's only the third interstellar object that we've ever observed, and it's not going to be

with us for long.

It's due to leave

our solar system by the end of the year. So the race is on to learn as much as we can about it

before it leaves us behind. Here to help us get to know Atlas is Dr. Stephanie Milam. She's an

astrochemist at NASA and a project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope. Stephanie,

welcome to Science Friday. Thanks so much for having me. Tell us about when you first met this object.

When was it spotted? I first met this object in the middle of the summer and I received a whole

slew of emails the 4th of July weekend, which nobody was checking

their email, of course, from my team.

And saying that this new interstellar object had been discovered and we needed to activate

our program on the James Webb Space Telescope to do a comprehensive study of what it's made of and hopefully disentangle some of the origins of these objects.

Okay, so you got word that there was this interstellar object and basically you were like, it's go time.

Right. So the principal

...