Alien Asteroid Heading Our Way

Unusual cigar-shaped asteroid confirmed as 1st alien object to enter solar system

A recently-discovered strange looking, cigar-shaped asteroid estimated to be about a quarter-mile long has been confirmed as the first alien object to enter our solar system.

NASA reports in a news release that the asteroid, named "Oumuamua," is "unlike asteroids seen in our solar system, it may provide new clues into how other solar systems formed." The U.S. space agency says that the asteroid could be 10 times as long as it is wide, and that Oumuamua has traveled unattached through the Milky Way for hundreds of millions of years before its discovery.

"For decades we've theorized that such interstellar objects are out there, and now - for the first time - we have direct evidence they exist," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator at NASA, said in the release.

"This history-making discovery is opening a new window to study formation of solar systems beyond our own."

NASA reports seeing the 1st confirmed alien object to enter Earth's solar system
This discovery is considered rare, as astronomers estimate that alien objects probably enter our solar system each year but are small and hard to spot.

As for its discovery, NASA says that was done by the University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS1 telescope back on Oct. 19. The U.S. space agency's planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson said they were "looking in the right place at the right time" in capturing the elongated space rock.

The space agency reports that Oumuamua was originally classified as a comet, but has been officially reclassified as interstellar asteroid 1l/2017.

"What a fascinating discovery this is!" Paul Chodas, manager of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in the release. "It's a strange visitor from a faraway star system, shaped like nothing we've ever seen in our own solar system neighborhood."