A star named S301 has been observed moving at an astonishing speed of 25,000 kilometers per second as it approaches Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. That speed is about 8.5% of the speed of light, making it the fastest star recorded in our galaxy. The discovery, published in the journal Nature in August 2026, was made using the GRAVITY+ instrument on the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) in Chile. The VLTI combines light from four large telescopes to simulate a much larger telescope, allowing for extremely detailed observations of distant objects. S301 orbits Sagittarius A* every 8.7 years, a stark contrast to the Sun’s 200 million-year orbit around the galaxy’s center. At its closest approach, the star comes within about 1.4 billion kilometers of the black hole—roughly the distance between Saturn and the Sun. Sagittarius A* has a mass equivalent to about four million Suns. This close encounter allows scientists to study the effects of general relativity in an environment far more extreme than anything on Earth. Reinhard Genzel, a Nobel laureate in physics, suggested that S301 might offer new insights into the nature of space and time under such intense gravitational forces. Researchers plan to use S301’s orbit to study the spin of Sagittarius A* through a phenomenon known as the Lense-Thirring effect. This effect, predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, describes how a rotating black hole drags the surrounding space-time with it. The next closest approach of S301 is expected around the end of 2031, offering scientists a chance to test predictions about how space-time might be warped around the black hole. However, scientists caution that multiple observations may be necessary to confirm the black hole’s spin accurately. The origin of S301 remains uncertain. One theory suggests it was once part of a binary star system that was torn apart by Sagittarius A*’s immense gravitational pull. In this scenario, one star was captured by the black hole while the other was flung away—a process known as the Hills effect, which has been proposed to explain other fast-moving stars. However, without a confirmed measurement of S301’s radial velocity, scientists cannot yet determine the exact orientation of its orbit. By retracing its path, researchers have found that its last closest approach to the black hole occurred in early 2023, providing clues about its trajectory over the past several years.