NASA confirms that a mysterious object is passing through the solar system: it is an interstellar visitor and will pass very close to Earth.

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 The object's new official name is 3I/ATLAS. It was revealed that it is likely a comet.


NASA scientists recently confirmed that a mysterious object will pass very close to Earth through the Solar System. It is an "interstellar object," only the third of its kind ever seen.

According to the Lives Science portal, this extrasolar entity was initially named A11pl3Z, and both NASA and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) classified it as a confirmed object in early July.

The discovery was made using data collected between June 25 and 29 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) , which automatically scans the night sky using telescopes in Hawaii, Chile, and South Africa.

Multiple telescopes around the world subsequently detected the object in observation data dating back to June 14.

Where is this object traveling?

It is traveling toward the Sun at a very high speed: about 245,000 kilometers per hour. Observations suggest that it follows an extremely flat and straight trajectory, quite unlike any other object in the solar system.

Many experts believe it may have originated beyond the sun's gravitational influence and has enough momentum to traverse cosmic velocity without slowing down.

According to La Vanguardia, NASA recently issued a statement confirming that A11pl3Z is an interstellar object and that it will not remain in the solar system for long.

The object's new official name is 3I/ATLAS. It was revealed that it is likely a comet, thus disproving previous speculation that it could be an asteroid. The comet's full name is C/2025 N1 (ATLAS).


So far, two interstellar objects have been confirmed to have been sighted:

  • Comet 2I/Borisov was seen sailing through the solar system in 2019.
  • Oumuamua: A cigar-shaped object that made headlines in 2017.