Will We Soon Learn More -- About What 'Oumuamua Really Was?

We could soon learn much, here -- about objects that may pass through our local area only once, or only once every few hundred thousand years. Primordial objects, likely forged in the same fires that ultimately begat this solar system.

We are conflicted though, even as we personally await a more just name for this next gen space 'scope, we are thrilled by the possibilities of new interstellar space science discoveries it will offer. In this regard, the power of this 'scope will be jaw slacking (when the 18 mirrors are perfectly aligned): the degree of precision with which it will detect changes in the pointing to a celestial object is the equivalent of a person in New York City being able to see the eye motion of someone blinking at the Canadian border, 311 miles away. . . so we will see (in infrared light-waves) images at well-over 100 times the precision of Hubble.

Here's that story -- of what we might see, in the next long range primordial object, from Goddard Space Center:

. . .One of the most exciting findings in planetary science in recent years is the discovery of interstellar objects passing through our solar system. So far, astronomers have confirmed only two of these interlopers from other star systems — 1I/'Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2018 — but many, many more are thought to exist. Scientists have had only limited ability to study these objects once discovered, but all of that is about to change with NASA's [Next Gen] Space Telescope.

"The supreme sensitivity and power of [redacted 'scope name] now present us with an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the chemical composition of these interstellar objects and find out so much more about their nature: where they come from, how they were made, and what they can tell us about the conditions present in their home systems," explained Martin Cordiner, principal investigator of a Target of Opportunity program to study the composition of an interstellar object.

"The ability to study one of these and find out its composition — to really see material from around another planetary system close up — is truly an amazing thing," said Cordiner, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and The Catholic University of America. The first two interstellar objects detected were very different: One was very comet-like, and one was not. Cordiner and his team hope to find out how unique those objects were and whether they're representative of the broader population of interstellar objects. . . .

Onward, grinning, ever grinning -- into the night's moon-glow here. . . with grand-nieces over tomorrow.

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