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Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Avi Loeb loudly accused NASA of ducking questions about the interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS, saying agency officials have been uncharacteristically silent after he requested HiRISE data taken when the object passed near Mars on October 2, 2025. Loeb made the charge on national platforms and in interviews, arguing that the public has a right to see any images that might settle lingering questions about the object’s odd behavior.
Loeb has not been coy about what he sees as anomalies: an unusually large inferred size, a nickel-dominated composition, strange light polarization, and a trajectory that aligns with the plane of the planets — facts he says are hard to reconcile with a routine comet. He has even put a nontrivial probability on the object having a designed trajectory and has urged NASA and others to treat the data as too important to sit in a drawer.
Not everyone agrees with his provocative conclusions, and mainstream scientists — including NASA experts — have pushed back, insisting that 3I/ATLAS behaves like a comet and that the evidence overwhelmingly supports a natural origin. Those reassurances mean little to Americans who remember how often government agencies have minimized troubling facts in the past; when scientists outside the establishment raise questions, they should be answered, not shut down.
There is, however, a practical reason for some of the communication gaps: several NASA instrument pages note that public communications have been hampered by a federal government shutdown that suspended routine releases. That bureaucratic excuse is not the same as transparency, and it should not be a cover for withholding data that belongs to the taxpayers.
Conservatives who respect science should also respect scrutiny; questioning the consensus is not anti-science, it is the core of science. Members of Congress, including Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, have already pushed for mission extensions and release of data so we can get answers rather than sound bites, and that kind of oversight is exactly what a free republic demands.
We should be practical and aggressive: extend missions like Juno where possible, task the Mars fleet and international assets to share raw imagery immediately, and compel the release of any HiRISE frames that exist so independent analysts can examine them. The American people deserve raw data and the chance for independent experts to weigh in, not filtered summaries from a closed agency.
Dr. Loeb has staked his reputation on asking uncomfortable questions, and conservatives should applaud the willingness to challenge orthodoxy rather than reflexively cast doubt on the messenger. This is a moment for patriotism, not panic — demand transparency, back rigorous inquiry, and hold our institutions accountable so that when something truly extraordinary crosses our skies, we learn the truth and stay safe.
