By Will DunhamWASHINGTON (Reuters) -NASA is set on Wednesday to release new images of an interstellar object called 3I/ATLAS that astronomers have determined is a comet probably even older than our solar system.3I/ATLAS was first spotted in July by an Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS, telescope located in Rio Hurtado, Chile, and has been tracked by astronomers since then. Its unusual trajectory indicated that it was passing through our solar system from parts unknown.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementNASA said 3I/ATLAS poses no threat to Earth and will get no closer than about 170 million miles (275 million km) to our planet. 3I/ATLAS flew within about 19 million miles (30 million km) of Mars last month.NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya and Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, are among those due to discuss 3I/ATLAS on Wednesday at a briefing in Greenbelt, Maryland, to release the new imagery from telescopes and spacecraft, the U.S. space agency said.Astronomers have intensively studied 3I/ATLAS since it was first detected.”This is a comet that formed in another solar system, most likely more than eight billion years ago – which means it is older than our solar system, and the oldest thing we’ve ever seen close up,” University of Oxford astrophysicist Chris Lintott said.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementOur solar system formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago.3I/ATLAS is only the third interstellar object ever observed by astronomers traveling through the solar system. The others were objects called 1I/’Oumuamua (pronounced oh-MOO-uh-MOO-uh), detected in 2017, and 2I/Borisov, discovered in 2019.”So far, it seems to be m …
