Overview
- NOIRLab, NASA, ESA and VLT teams report no signs of artificial propulsion or maneuvers as 3I/ATLAS speeds through on a non‑returning trajectory at roughly 60–61 km/s.
- Spectroscopy detected molecules typical of Solar System comets — including water, methane, hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide — consistent with natural outgassing.
- NASA’s Planetary Defense office says there is no impact threat, projecting the object will not approach closer than about 1.6 AU (approximately 240 million km) to Earth.
- An arXiv study proposes long‑term galactic cosmic rays may have produced a CO2‑rich processed crust that could mask the object’s primordial composition; this remains a developing hypothesis.
- Political assertions of an “anomalous” tail are uncorroborated by public NASA data, as a separate discovery — C/2025 V1 (Borisov) — passed relatively near Earth on Nov. 11 and is unrelated to 3I/ATLAS.