Overview
- NASA will hold a live event at 3 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Nov. 19, from Goddard Space Flight Center with streaming on NASA+, the agency website, YouTube, and Amazon Prime.
- 3I/ATLAS is the third confirmed interstellar object, discovered on July 1, 2025 by the ATLAS survey funded by NASA.
- The comet will not approach closer than roughly 270–273 million kilometers to Earth, with closest approach forecast for Dec. 19, 2025, then a projected pass near Jupiter on March 16, 2026 before heading back into interstellar space on a hyperbolic path.
- Joint observations from Hubble, JWST, ground telescopes, and spacecraft refined its trajectory, with ESA reporting a tenfold improvement using ExoMars TGO data and NASA integrating orbit solutions via JPL databases and HORIZONS.
- The object passed about 30 million kilometers from Mars in early October, ESA notes JUICE observations are in progress with data expected around February 2026, and NASA plans public Q&A with images and data to enter agency archives after the briefing.