When 'Oumuamua passed through our solar system two years ago, it set off a flurry of excitement in the astronomical community. Here was the first-ever interstellar object that be observed by human trackers, and the mysteries surrounding its true nature and composition led to some pretty interesting theories. There were even some proposals for a rapid mission that would be able to rendezvous with it.
And now that a second interstellar object—C/2019 Q4 (Borisov)—has been detected traveling through the solar system, similar proposals are being made. One of them comes from a group of scientists from the Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is) in the U.K. In a recent study, they assess the technical feasibility of sending a mission to this interstellar comet using existing technology, and found that there were a few options.
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