Source: International Business Times
India's space telescope AstroSat may have captured images of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS days before NASA's official announcement, a claim now stirring global debate over data-sharing and scientific credit. Researchers involved in AstroSat's monitoring mission say the satellite captured early signs of a fast-moving, unidentified object in late June, days before the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Chile confirmed the discovery on 1 July, as reported by NASA's Planetary Defence Coordination Office. If validated, this would mark the first time an Indian observatory detected an interstellar object before its Western counterparts, potentially reshaping the hierarchy of space discovery.
