
The photos are out of this world!
NASA unveiled jaw-dropping high-res images of 3I/ATLAS on Wednesday as questions swirl about the origin of the Manhattan-sized interstellar object.
The long-awaited photos, snapped by multiple NASA spacecraft between September and mid-October, show a tiny, glowing orb encircled by a hazy halo of gas and dust, hurtling through space about 190 million miles from Earth at a staggering 153,000 miles per hour.
“It’s a little bit as if our NASA spacecraft were at a baseball game, watching the game from different places in the stadium,” said Tom Statler, NASA lead scientist for solar system small bodies, CNN reported.
“Everybody has got a camera and they’re trying to get a picture of the ball and nobody has a perfect view, and everybody has a different camera.”
NASA’s Psyche Mission captured four different views of the celestial object over an eight-hour span on Sept. 8 and 9 from 33 million miles away, giving scientists a first detailed look at the faint, ghostly gas cloud – or coma – enveloping its nucleus, the space agency said.

Days later, the Lucy Mission snapped a new batch of images from 240 million miles out, stacking them previous shots to shed light on the comet’s misty coma and trailing tail.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Perseverance rover also kept a close eye on the comet as it whizzed past the Red Planet in October.
Nearly 20 mission teams collaborated to capture the stunning images, a NASA official told CNN.
“Everything we’re learning about the comet is possible because of the distribution of all of the different instruments on our spacecraft with different capabilities,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
“We’ve even pushed out scientific instruments beyond the things that they were designed to achieve, to allow us to capture this amazing glimpse at this interstellar traveler.”
The images were delayed due to the government shutdown, which ended last week.
The stellar voyager – just the third ever spotted in our solar system – was first detected in July, igniting a frenzy among scientists debating whether it’s a natural object or a mysterious alien probe.
“It looks and behaves like a comet, and all evidence points to it being a comet,” NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya told CNN.
“But this one came from outside the solar system, which makes it fascinating, exciting and scientifically very important.”
3I/ATLAS will make its closest approach to Earth on Dec. 19, zipping by at about 167 million miles away – giving scientists their best shot to figure out if the stellar intruder is a comet or an artificial craft.
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