NASA’s Psyche spacecraft have acquired new images of 3I/ATLAS, the third object and the second comet from outside the Solar System confirmed.
Psyche acquired four observations of 3I/ATLAS over the course of eight hours on September 8 and 9, 2025. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU.
3I/ATLAS was discovered by the ATLAS survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, on July 1, 2025.
The interstellar comet’s orbit is the most dynamically extreme of any object yet recorded in the Solar System.
Also known as C/2025 N1 (ATLAS) and A11pl3Z, 3I/ATLAS reached its closest approach to the Sun on October 30, 2025.
The new images of the comet were captured over the course of eight hours on September 8 and 9, 2025, when 3I/ATLAS was about 53 million km (33 million miles) from NASA’s Psyche spacecraft.
“Captured by the mission’s multispectral imager, these observations help us refine the trajectory of 3I/ATLAS,” members of the Psyche team said in a statement.
“Psyche’s multispectral imager instrument comprises a pair of identical cameras equipped with filters and telescopic lenses to photograph the metal-rich asteroid Psyche’s surface in different wavelengths of light.”
“While comet 3I/ATLAS was distant from the spacecraft during these observations, the imager’s sensitivity to the comet’s reflected sunlight meant that the mission could precisely track the object.”
The new observations also provide more information about 3I/ATLAS’s faint coma, or cloud of gas and dust, surrounding its nucleus — the central frozen core of ice and rock.
“Psyche joins many other NASA missions in determining the comet’s location over time, which helps astronomers better understand its motion as it passes through the Solar System,” the researchers said.
“While the comet poses no threat to Earth, NASA’s space missions help support the agency’s ongoing commitment to find, track, and better understand solar system objects.”
