News from i4is The next meeting of the i4is SF Book Club is Thursday, 19th March 2026 at 1900 UK time (online) A keen group of i4is members – writers and readers of SF meet monthly online for about one hour to discuss various SF stories, currently short stories taken from ‘The Road to Science […]
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A Mission to 3I/ATLAS by Solar Slingshot (a layperson’s guide).
Adam Hibberd This is how I’d explain my paper to a mate in a pub: “The Solar System is comprised of lots of different objects (like planets, asteroids and comets) which go around the central Sun, in huge ellipses. You may say the Earth’s path is circular, that’s true, but in fact all circles are […]
Sample Return Mission Feasibility of 2024 YR4
Adam Hibberd A mission to Near Earth Asteroid designated 2024 YR4 which for a while had a relatively high chance of colliding with the Earth. This probability has dropped to zero but instead the likelihood of impact with the Moon has gone up – it is now ~ 4 %. Such a collision would cause […]
Members Newsletter – January
Catching 3I/ATLAS Using a Solar OberthThree of our regular contributors Adam Hibberd (i4is, London), T. Marshall Eubanks (Space Initiatives Inc, USA) and Andreas Hein (i4is Exec Director and University of Luxembourg) have co-authored this 3I/ATLAS paper, https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.02533. The third interstellar object to be discovered, 3I/ATLAS, has a unique and continually unfolding story to tell of […]
A Challenge for OITS
Adam Hibberd I was recently asked by a US colleague to do a little research using ‘OITS’. For those of you unaware by now, ‘OITS’ stands for ‘Optimum Interplanetary Trajectory Software’ and is a powerful tool I developed single-handedly for studying the problem of sending spacecraft on heliocentric trajectories to a planet or for that […]
3I/ATLAS: Is It Worth a Solar Oberth?
Adam Hibberd Have you noticed, 3I/ATLAS is well and truly on its way out of the Solar System? It has afterall passed through its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) and is well on its way to a close encounter with Jupiter in mid-March – given this, it would seem to be the ideal moment […]
Members Newsletter – December
Intercepting Interstellar Objects A recent paper by Colin Snodgrass (University of Edinburgh, UK) et al (https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.00492) describes how the ESA Comet Interceptor mission, which is due to launch in 2028/29 to a yet-to-be-discovered target, can provide a conceptual basis for a future mission to visit an Interstellar Object. Comet Interceptor will wait in space until […]
The SpaceX Starship and Catching an Interstellar Object
Adam Hibberd On the request of a colleague, I have solved the problem of exploiting the powerful SpaceX Starship (in fact the yet to be launched Block 3 variant) to lift a spacecraft so that it can catch up with 1I/’Oumuamua, the now rapidly receding ‘interstellar object’. This object sped through the inner group of […]