Rare Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS – a 10-Billion-Year-Old Time Capsule – Flies Past Mars
A Visitor from Beyond the Solar System Humanity has waited a long time to study a comet from another star – and suddenly, within a decade, we’ve had three. 3I/ATLAS (officially 3I/2025 A1) is the latest of these rare interstellar interlopers. It was first detected moving through the outer Solar System in June 2025 with an exceptionally eccentric orbit. Follow-up observations quickly confirmed what its speed and trajectory implied: this object was not bound to the Sun’s gravityts2.tech. By July 2025, the Minor Planet Center designated it the third interstellar object ever foundts2.tech. Like its predecessors – the cigar-shaped 1I/‘Oumuamua and cometary 2I/Borisov – 3I/ATLAS is