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A predominantly black view of space is dotted with white stars, some of them labeled with names. Moving upward through the image, small white arrows indicate the position of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it moves in front of the starfield, with date and time of four Psyche observations labeled. The comet appears slightly fuzzy compared with the pinpoint stars in the background. The inset in the bottom left shows a zoomed in and pixelated view of the comet.

Psyche tracks 3I/ATLAS

NASA’s Psyche mission acquired four observations of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS over the course of eight hours on Sept. 8 and 9, 2025, when the comet was about 33 million miles (53 million kilometers) from the spacecraft. The data, captured by Psyche’s multispectral imager, is helping astronomers both refine the trajectory of 3I/ATLAS and learn more about the faint coma, or cloud of gas, surrounding its nucleus (shown in the zoomed-in inset image).

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
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Image CreditNASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
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