Cataloguing the journey of comet 3I/ATLAS through the solar system. Because the object comes from outside our solar system, it is just passing through – so we use all the tools at our disposal to observe it before it disappears back into the cosmic dark. A host of NASA missions are coming together to observe this interstellar object, which was first discovered in summer 2025, before it leaves forever. While the comet poses no threat to Earth, NASA’s space telescopes help support the agency's ongoing mission to find, track, and better understand solar system objects.
NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) observed the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS during a special observation run from Jan. 15 to 22. Scientists will use the data to study the comet’s activity and rotation. Using TESS data from Jan. 15 and Jan. 18 to 19, Daniel Muthukrishna, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of […]
