Overview

• NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope released detailed images on July 22 showing a bright, expanding dust-gas coma around the comet’s approximately 5.6 km nucleus.
• 3I/ATLAS follows a steep hyperbolic trajectory that confirms its interstellar origin as the third known visitor after ʻOumuamua and Borisov.
• Archival data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory between June 21 and July 7 documented a 58 percent growth in the coma, revealing vigorous outgassing.
• Theoretical physicist Avi Loeb has proposed an alien-probe hypothesis based on the comet’s size and orbital alignment, though no non-gravitational acceleration has been observed.
• European Space Agency planetary defense head Richard Moissl states that all current observations align with natural comet behavior as global campaigns intensify ahead of its October perihelion.