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America deserves answers, not bureaucratic silence. Last week Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Avi Loeb publicly demanded that NASA release the HiRISE images taken of the interstellar object now called 3I/ATLAS, accusing the agency of holding critical data during the government shutdown and begging the question of what they might be hiding. Loeb made his case on national media and in a detailed Medium post, and his charge should be taken seriously by any American who believes government should be accountable to the people.
The timeline is stark and simple: 3I/ATLAS swept past Mars in early October and several spacecraft had perfect geometry to image it, including NASA’s HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Loeb and others say HiRISE captured high-resolution shots on October 3, yet NASA did not release those images for weeks, citing the federal shutdown—an excuse that rings hollow to taxpayers who fund these missions and expect transparency. If true, keeping historic images locked up while agencies campaign for our trust is an insult to every hardworking American.
Meanwhile, images China’s Tianwen-1 mission released were widely criticized as severely downsampled, and Loeb says those images were deliberately degraded well below the camera’s known capability, leaving more questions than answers. That kind of selective release — one partner showing fuzzy, tiny dots while the other agency produces utter radio silence — looks less like careful science and more like coordinated obfuscation to anyone paying attention. The public has a right to the raw data so independent scientists can verify, replicate, or refute claims without government filters.
Not everyone agrees with Loeb’s alarm, and many scientists maintain 3I/ATLAS is a natural interstellar comet behaving oddly but explainably; mainstream analyses have suggested typical cometary activity and urged caution before leaping to extraordinary conclusions. That scientific skepticism is healthy and necessary, but skepticism cuts both ways — it should also apply to agencies that withhold data from the public and delay answers until the narrative has been shaped. Americans should demand both rigorous science and total transparency, not secrecy dressed up as caution.
Conservatives in Congress have begun to press for release of the material, with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and others publicly asking NASA to hand over the HiRISE files so scientists and citizens can see what was actually recorded. This is precisely the kind of oversight that stops bureaucracies from becoming the final word on matters that affect national security and public trust; if data exists, it should be released immediately for independent review rather than sitting behind agency gates. The American people are owed the truth, plain and simple.
For patriots who value both scientific curiosity and national sovereignty, the right response is not blind fearmongering but insistence on accountability: release the images, let independent teams examine the raw files, and fund transparent observation campaigns. The object 3I/ATLAS has already been the subject of legitimate research and precovery studies; continued open observation will either confirm natural explanations or force a reckoning if anomalies persist. We should back the scientists who seek answers and prosecute with sunlight any agency that tries to hide what it knows.
This moment is about more than one strange visitor from space — it’s about preserving the right of free Americans to demand truth from institutions that answer to us. If government agencies want our trust, they’ll earn it by releasing the data, explaining their analyses, and submitting to the scrutiny of independent experts and Congress. Until then, patriotic citizens should keep asking the hard questions and refuse to be patronized by officials who think they can decide what we can or cannot see.
