Overview
- NASA released a HiRISE image from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showing 3I/ATLAS as a sunlit coma or “fuzzy white ball” at roughly 19 miles per pixel from about 19 million miles away.
- The object has been tracked from multiple vantage points, including Mars (MRO, Perseverance), Earth-based and sun-facing observatories (STEREO, SOHO, PUNCH), and deep-space missions such as Psyche and Lucy.
- ESA’s Mars observations sharpened the orbital solution by about a factor of 10, improving predictions and enabling coordinated observing plans for the Earth approach.
- NASA officials say the preponderance of evidence supports a natural cometary explanation, while Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb disputes jet orientations seen in the Mars image.
- 3I/ATLAS is only the third confirmed interstellar object and will pass closest to Earth on December 19 at about 269 million kilometers, when telescopes plan targeted follow-up to study its jets and composition.