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NASA has confirmed that comet 3I\/ATLAS is the third known object from another star system to pass through our solar system, following the mysterious \u2018Oumuamua in 2017 and comet 2I\/Borisov in 2019. Discovered on July 1, 2025, by the NASA-funded ATLAS survey telescope in Chile, the visitor was immediately notable for its exceptional speed and hyperbolic trajectory\u2014a path showing that it was moving too quickly to remain gravitationally bound to the Sun.<\/p>\n
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Unlike \u2018Oumuamua, whose limited period of observation left major questions about its nature, 3I\/ATLAS displayed an icy nucleus surrounded by a visible coma of gas and dust, allowing astronomers to classify it confidently as a natural comet. Its color, direction, motion and changes in activity have all remained consistent with cometary behavior.<\/p>\n
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The dark, engraved spacecraft shown in the accompanying thumbnail is therefore a fictional illustration, not an image recorded by NASA, and researchers have found no evidence that 3I\/ATLAS is artificial or hostile. What makes the comet genuinely extraordinary is its chemistry. As it traveled away from the Sun in December 2025, the James Webb Space Telescope used its Near-Infrared Spectrograph to map water, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and other gases in the surrounding coma.<\/p>\n
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The measurements revealed about 30 times more deuterium\u2014often called heavy hydrogen\u2014than scientists have measured in comets formed inside our solar system. Webb also detected unusually low amounts of carbon-13 relative to carbon-12. Together, these isotopic fingerprints suggest that 3I\/ATLAS may have formed in a cold, dense environment as long as 10 to 12 billion years ago, potentially making it far older than our 4.5-billion-year-old Sun.<\/p>\n
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Observations by NASA\u2019s SPHEREx telescope added another surprise when the comet brightened dramatically about two months after passing closest to the Sun. Its coma contained water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and organic molecules including methanol, cyanide and methane. Scientists believe solar heat took time to penetrate a radiation-processed outer crust before reaching pristine ice buried inside, triggering delayed eruptions of gas, rocky grains and unusually large particles.<\/p>\n
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Organic molecules are essential ingredients in terrestrial biology, but their presence does not indicate life; they can arise through ordinary non-biological chemistry. At its closest approach to Earth on December 19, 2025, 3I\/ATLAS remained roughly 170 million miles away and posed no impact danger. It has continued along its predicted course back toward interstellar space, never to return.<\/p>\n
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NASA spacecraft near Mars, along with Hubble, Webb, TESS, SPHEREx, Psyche, Lucy and Europa Clipper, observed the comet from different locations and wavelengths, turning its brief visit into an unprecedented scientific campaign.<\/p>\n