The 3I-ATLAS comet is discovered on July 1, 2025 by the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope in Río Hurtado, Chile. This survey is a NASA-funded project that uses a network of robotic telescopes to scan the night sky. Other telescopes helped confirm its interstellar origin.
NASA concluded that 3I/ATLAS is a natural comet, not an alien probe. Evidence for this includes its hyperbolic trajectory, which means it will not orbit the Sun and is just passing through.3I/ATLAS is thought to be at least 7 billion years old, making it likely twice as old as Earth, and the oldest comet we've ever seen. The comet poses no threat to Earth because it will remain at a safe distance. The Hubble Space Telescope estimated the comet's width to be up to 3.5 miles (5.6 km). The object is traveling toward the sun extremely fast, at around 152,000 mph (245,000 km /h), on an extremely flat and straight trajectory with enough momentum to shoot straight through our cosmic neighborhood without slowing down.
By ESA/Hubble, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/...
