NASA will reveal new imagery of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on Wednesday (Nov. 19), and you can watch it live.
The briefing participants are:
- NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya
- Nicky Fox, associate administrator, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate
- Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director, NASA’s Astrophysics Division
- Tom Statler, NASA lead scientist for solar system small bodies
Comet 3I/ATLAS was discovered on July 1 of this year by the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) observatory, which is funded by NASA.
It’s the third interstellar comet ever discovered in our solar system, after 1I/’Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, which were spotted in October 2017 and August 2019, respectively.
On Oct. 29, 3I/ATLAS made its closest approach to the sun, a milestone known as perihelion; it came within about 130 million miles (210 million kilometers) of our star. The new imagery may highlight increased cometary activity caused by this solar passage, though NASA’s brief release doesn’t tease that possibility.
“Assets within NASA’s science missions give the United States the unique capability to observe 3I/ATLAS almost the entire time it passes through our celestial neighborhood, and study — with complementary scientific instruments and from different directions — how the comet behaves,” NASA officials said in the statement. “These assets include both spacecraft across the solar system, as well as ground-based observatories.”
Comet 3I/ATLAS made its closest approach to Mars on Oct. 3, flying within a mere 19 million miles (30 million km) of the Red Planet. The interstellar interloper won’t give Earth nearly that close a shave; it will zoom within about 170 million miles (270 million km) of our planet on Dec. 19.