Last month, the European Space Agency used five of the science instruments attached to its Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) to get a better sense of its composition and behavior. JUICE completed a flyby of Venus in August to gain speed for its decade-long journey to Jupiter\u2019s icy moons.<\/p>\n
As ESA scientists await the data, the spacecraft\u2019s NavCam snapped a preliminary picture of the extremely rare visitor on November 2. That\u2019s just two days before the probe\u2019s closest approach of 3I\/ATLAS, coming within just 41 million miles, and three days after the object reached its perihelion<\/a>, or the closest point to the Sun. The scientists were \u201csurprised\u201d to find it \u201csurrounded by signs of activity\u201d as it was being heated up by the Sun, according to a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThough the data from the science instruments won\u2019t arrive on Earth until February 2026, our JUICE team couldn\u2019t wait that long,\u201d the ESA wrote.<\/p>\n The NavCam is technically not designed to capture high-resolution pictures of the cosmos, and is meant to help JUICE navigate Jupiter\u2019s icy moons in 2031, as its name suggests. But even with just a quarter of a single image\u2019s data downloaded, the team could clearly observe 3I\/ATLAS\u2019 coma, its glowing halo of gas and dust that surrounds its nucleus.<\/p>\n The image also showed a \u201chint of two tails,\u201d according to the ESA: a \u201cplasma tail\u201d that\u2019s made up of electrically charged gas, and a harder-to-spot \u201cdust tail,\u201d that in the case of a solar system comet would be made up of tiny specks the size of smoke particles<\/a>. The former tends to point away from the Sun, while the latter curves into the comet\u2019s path.<\/p>\n As 3I\/ATLAS approached its perihelion, or its closest point to the Sun, in October, astronomers observed the more visible former tail growing considerably. That\u2019s largely to be expected<\/a> for a natural comet as it\u2019s exposed to much larger amounts of solar radiation, which causes ices to sublimate and leave a trail behind it.<\/p>\n In the case of 3I\/ATLAS, it\u2019s an exceedingly rare opportunity to study interstellar space, as it\u2019s only the third object from a different star system ever spotted passing through our solar system.<\/p>\n Fortunately, with the help of existing spacecraft, we could soon get a better sense of its nature. The five instruments attached to JUICE, for instance, will include high-resolution multispectral and hyperspectral images, ultraviolet and submillimeter wave data, and particle spectrometer readings.<\/p>\n But scientists will have to be patient, as the data is expected to arrive in late February, a delay caused by JUICE \u201cusing its main high-gain antenna as a heat shield to protect it from the Sun, leaving its smaller medium-gain antenna to send data back to Earth at a much lower rate,\u201d according to the ESA.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1764929290_539_Comet_3I_ATLAS_shows_activity_in_Juice_navigation_camera_teaser_pillars.png\")
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