Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS | NASA SPHEREx Mission

Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS | NASA SPHEREx Mission

NASA’s SPHEREx space telescope, short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS Aug. 7 to Aug. 15, 2025. The SPHEREx team has been analyzing insights from this data, and a research note is available online here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.15469

NASA is cataloguing the journey of comet 3I/ATLAS through the solar system. Since the object comes from outside our solar system, it is just passing through—so we use all the tools at our disposal to observe it before it disappears back into the cosmic dark. A host of NASA missions are coming together to observe this interstellar object, first discovered in summer 2025, before it leaves forever. While the comet poses no threat to Earth, NASA’s space telescopes help support the agency's ongoing mission to find, track, and better understand solar system objects.

The agency’s SPHEREx is one of NASA’s space telescopes observing this comet, together providing more information about its size, physical properties, and chemical makeup. For example, NASA’s Webb and Hubble space telescopes also recently observed the comet. 

Image Description: Against a black background is a red circle, which appears fuzzy and slightly pixelated. At the center is a bright area of yellow, and at the center of that is a bright area of white.

Learn more about the SPHEREx Mission:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/spherex/

Credit: NASA/SPHEREx/JPL/Caltech

Release Date: Aug. 25, 2025

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