NASA has announced an exciting discovery hurtling through our solar system: an interstellar object. It’s a comet, but beyond that, its size and characteristics are still mostly unknown. Simply called 3I/ATLAS, it’s just the third such object ever discovered. The ‘3’ designates the third, and the ‘I’ specifies its interstellar nature.

NASA has discovered an interstellar comet that's wandered into our backyard. Luckily, it won't get near enough to be a threat to our planet.

NASA has discovered a new interstellar comet that's currently located about 420 million miles away from Earth. The space agency spotted the quick-moving object with the Atlas telescope in Chile on Tuesday and confirmed it was a comet from another star system. The new interstellar comet's official name is 3I/ATLAS.