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Space
Space
Science
Keith Cooper

You won't see interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS zoom closest to the sun on Oct. 30 — but these spacecraft will

A blue ball of light shines between streaks of blueish light from stars in outer space.

The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is just a day away from perihelion, which is its closest point to the sun and the time around which it is expected to be most active. Although 3I/ATLAS is currently hidden from view from Earth, flying behind the sun, spacecraft elsewhere in the solar system still have the comet in their sights.

Perihelion for 3I/ATLAS takes place on Oct. 30, when the interstellar interloper will be 1.35 astronomical units (125 million miles, or 202 million kilometers) from the sun. (One astronomical unit is the average Earth-sun distance — about 93 million miles, or 150 million km.)

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