Lyra

A long time ago, aliens fired a missile toward our solar system. Our sun nudged the thing into an "orbit" that was almost, but not quite, parabolic: eccentricity 1.2 or such. Since it was found by astronomers in Hawaii they named it `Oumuamua. A standard elliptic orbit can be nudged into hyperbolism but in this case, there wasn't anything around that could have done that.

So, aliens it was. Okay okay, sorry to take the fun out of things; it wasn't little green men who did it, it was some other solar system's gravitational chaos.

Unfortunately Oumuamua was very dark so we only saw it on its way out. Last November Greg Cochran suggested we send a probe to chase Oumuamua down and film it; in parallel, there was a "Lyra" mission proposed to do just that.

Nothing came of Lyra, not for Oumuamua and not for the eight hyperbolic visitors spotted as of March 2018. But now, here comes another alien. This one is VERY hyperbolic, eccentricity 3. The good news is: it's a comet, coated in bright ice. We've seen it on its way in. The Bad Astronomy blog on SyFy has the best summary.

I suggest that the Lyra team pick up where they left off and hurry up and do it. This is as close to Rama as we get.

UPDATE 11/5 - we'd caught more visitors last year but I'd missed that article.