NASA to Share Comet 3I/ATLAS Images From Spacecraft, Telescopes - UNIVERSE

Hubble captured this image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on July 21, 2025, when the comet was 277 million miles from Earth. Hubble shows that the comet has a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off its solid, icy nucleus.

Credit: NASA, ESA, David Jewitt (UCLA); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

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NASA will host a live event at 3 p.m. EST, Wednesday, Nov. 19, to share imagery of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS collected by a number of the agency’s missions. The event will take place at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Comet 3I/ATLAS, discovered by the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) observatory on July 1, is only the third object ever identified as entering our solar system from elsewhere in the galaxy. While it poses no threat to Earth and will get no closer than 170 million miles to Earth, the comet flew within 19 million miles of Mars in early October.

The event will air on NASA+, the NASA app, the agency’s website and YouTube channel, and Amazon Prime.

Briefing participants include:

• NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya
• Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate
• Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director, Astrophysics Division
• Tom Statler, lead scientist for solar system small bodies

To participate virtually in the NASA Live event, members of the media must send their full name, media affiliation, email address, and phone number no later than two hours before the start of the event to Molly Wasser at: molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov. Members of the public also may ask questions, which may be answered in real time during the broadcast, by using #AskNASA on social media.

Assets within NASA’s science missions give the United States the unique capability to observe 3I/ATLAS almost the entire time it passes through our celestial neighborhood, and study – with complementary scientific instruments and from different directions – how the comet behaves. These assets include both spacecraft across the solar system, as well as ground-based observatories.

For more information on 3I/ATLAS, visit: https://go.nasa.gov/3I-ATLAS 

Source: NASA to Share Comet 3I/ATLAS Images From Spacecraft, Telescopes - NASA