Overview
- NASA will brief the public at 3 p.m. ET from Goddard to release new imagery gathered by space- and ground-based assets across the solar system.
- Live views from Italy’s Virtual Telescope Project showed a bright coma and tail, with astronomer Gianluca Masi emphasizing the object is unequivocally a comet.
- ISRO–PRL observations from Mount Abu (Nov. 12–15) captured a near-circular coma and ion-tail features and detected CN, C2 and C3 bands typical of comet chemistry.
- ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter imaged 3I/ATLAS during its early-October pass by Mars, enabling a roughly tenfold improvement in the accuracy of trajectory predictions.
- Scientists report no threat to Earth, with closest approach around Dec. 19 at about 170 million miles, and leading experts dismiss claims of artificial origin based on consistent comet-like behavior.