NASA has identified a comet from another star system that’s made its way into our solar neighborhood.
Spotted earlier this week by the Atlas telescope in Chile, the fast-moving object was confirmed to be an interstellar comet — only the third such object ever recorded passing through our solar system. Fortunately, NASA says it poses no danger to Earth.
“This object has likely been traveling across space for hundreds of millions, maybe even billions, of years,” said Paul Chodas, director of NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies. “It takes an incredibly long time to journey from one star system to another, so we can’t say exactly where it originated.”
Currently, the comet is about 416 million miles (670 million kilometers) from the sun, in the vicinity of Jupiter, and hurtling inward at 37 miles (59 kilometers) per second.
NASA expects the comet to make its closest approach to the sun in late October. At that point, it will pass between the orbits of Earth and Mars — but still maintain a safe distance of about 150 million miles (240 million kilometers) from our planet.
