NASA Debunks Rumors About Interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas

NASA Debunks Rumors About Interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas

 TYLER DURDEN

With the federal government shutdown over, NASA leadership was finally able to provide an update to the public about an interstellar object that was caught passing through the solar system in July.

A press conference was livestreamed on Nov. 19, and it began with Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya confirming that the object known as 3I/Atlas was an interstellar comet and nothing else.

“I think it’s important that we talk about [the fact] that this object is a comet,” he said.

”It looks and behaves like a comet, and has and all evidence points to it being a comet. But this one came from outside the solar system, which makes it fascinating, exciting, and scientifically very important.”

The name 3I/Atlas comes from the fact that it is only the third interstellar object (3I) NASA has discovered that originated from outside the solar system, and it was first picked up by the NASA-funded Atlas Survey Telescope located in the mountains of Chile.

Discovered on July 1 by its planetary defense network—which also found it posed no threat to Earth—NASA retasked a large portion of its fleet of interplanetary science spacecraft to track the comet as it made its closest pass to the sun at the end of October.

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