New interstellar comet will keep a safe distance from Earth, NASA says

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA has discovered an interstellar comet that's wandered into our backyard.

The abstraction bureau spotted the quick-moving entity with the Atlas scope successful Chile earlier this week, and confirmed it was a comet from different prima system.

It's officially the 3rd known interstellar entity to walk done our star strategy and poses nary menace to Earth.

"These things instrumentality millions of years to spell from 1 stellar vicinity to another, truthful this happening has apt been traveling done abstraction for hundreds of millions of years, adjacent billions of years," Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, said Thursday. "We don't know, and truthful we can't foretell which prima it came from."

The newest visitant is 416 cardinal miles (670 cardinal kilometers) from the sun, retired adjacent Jupiter, and heading this mode astatine a blistering 37 miles (59 kilometers) per second.

NASA said the comet volition marque its closest attack to the prima successful precocious October, scooting betwixt the orbits of Mars and Earth - but person to the reddish satellite than america astatine a harmless 150 cardinal miles (240 cardinal kilometers) away.

Astronomers astir the satellite are monitoring the icy snowball that's been officially designated arsenic 3I/Atlas to find its size and shape. Chodas told The Associated Press that determination person been much than 100 observations since its find connected July 1, with preliminary reports of a process and a unreality of state and particulate astir the comet's nucleus.

The comet should beryllium disposable by scope done September, earlier it gets excessively adjacent to the sun, and reappear successful December connected the different broadside of the sun.

This diagram provided by NASA/JPL-Caltech shows the trajectory of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS arsenic it passes done the star system.

NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP

Based connected its brightness, the comet appears to beryllium bigger than the archetypal 2 interstellar interlopers, perchance respective miles (tens of kilometers) across, Chodas said. It's coming successful faster, too, from a antithetic direction, and portion its location prima is unknown, scientists fishy it was person to the halfway of our Milky Way galaxy.

The archetypal interstellar visitant observed from Earth was Oumuamua, Hawaiian for scout, successful grant of the observatory successful Hawaii that discovered it successful 2017. Classified astatine archetypal arsenic an asteroid, the elongated Oumuamua has since showed signs of being a comet.

The 2nd entity confirmed to person strayed from different prima strategy into our ain - 21/Borisov - was discovered successful 2019 by a Crimean amateur astronomer with that name. It, too, is believed to beryllium a comet.

"We've been expecting to spot interstellar objects for decades, frankly, and yet we're seeing them," Chodas said. "A visitant from different star system, adjacent though it's earthy - it's not artificial, don't get excited due to the fact that immoderate radical bash ... It's conscionable precise exciting."