Those hoping an infamous interstellar object that visited our cosmic neighborhood in 2025 was an extraterrestrial attempt to contact Earth are in for more disapointment.
The evidence is mounting to confirm what scientists and agencies like NASA have long insisted upon: 3I/ATLAS is definitely not an alien spaceship.
Researchers at none other than the SETI Institute are the latest to confirm that the object, which originated from outside our solar system, is almost certainly a natural comet.
How can they be sure?
Well, the team analyzed a wide range of radio frequencies looking for signs emanating off of 3I/ATLAs of extraterrestrial technology – known as technosignatures. As expected, they found nada.
Here’s what to know about 3I/ATLAS, and why researchers are convinced it’s not some sort of advanced alien probe.
The object known as 3I/ATLAS made news in July 2025 when it was confirmed to be the third object ever discovered originating outside Earth’s solar system. A telescope in Chile – part of the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS – was the first to spot the object whizzing at 137,000 mph, according to NASA.
The object was somehow ejected as many as billions of years ago into interstellar space – the region between stars – before it entered into Earth’s cosmic neighborhood, NASA says. The interstellar interloper came from the general direction of the constellation Sagittarius, where the central region of our Milky Way galaxy is located.
Scientist who have observed 3I/ATLAS say it shows all the tell-tale signs of being a comet, including an icy nucleus and a bright cloud of gas and dust surrounding it, known as a coma. Unlike comets bound to the sun’s gravity, 3I/ATLAS is traveling on a hyperbolic orbit that suggests it did not originate within our solar system, according to NASA.
Observations from the Hubble Space Telescope revealed 3I/ATLAS could be anywhere from about 1,400 feet to 3.5 miles in size.
The SETI Institute, which has long been at the forefront of efforts to find extraterrestrials, said it has conclusively ruled out 3I/ATLAS as anything other than a natural object.
The conclusion was reached after SETI researchers conducted more than seven hours of observations in July 2025 around the time the comet was first discovered. By combing through nearly 74 million narrow-band radio signals, researchers determined that nothing traced back to 3I/ATLAS.
Instead, after accounting for things like human interference and accounting for 3I/ATLAS’ movements, all 200 possible signals that remained “traced back to technology on the surface of the Earth or our own Earth-orbiting satellites,” SETI said in a June 3 press release.
In other words, the researchers concluded that 3I/ATLAS showed no evidence of being alien technology.
Ever since interest in 3I/ATLAS first entered the mainstream, a Harvard astrophysicist named Avi Loeb has continually insisted that the possibility of it being extraterrestrial in origin should not be discounted. Though evidence has only continued to mount that the object is completely natural, Loeb has remained committed to such theorizing.
In his latest blog post on the publishing platform Medium, Loeb gave credence to the idea that the strange visitor might be spreading ingredients for life throughout the cosmos. Writing in the May 25 post, Loeb compares the debated phenomenon, called panspermia, to a dandelion “shedding its seeds to be carried by wind towards a fertile ground.”
Loeb takes the idea a step further, saying that rather than being a natural process, an “interstellar gardener” could have intentionally designed the object to disperse materials necessary for life to flourish on habitable worlds.
To back the claim, Loeb cited the recent landmark discovery that 3I/ATLAS was spewing methane – a gas he theorizes could be evidence of a biosignature. NASA, though, said the presence of both methane and carbon dioxide on 3I/ATLAS suggests it was formed in a very different environment than comets in our solar system.
A look at all of the photos NASA has released of 3I/ATLAS since its discovery, including detailed explanations of each, are available below.
The comet, which was never in danger of hitting Earth, came within about 170 million miles of our planet Dec. 19, 2025. That was nearly twice the distance of Earth to the sun and more than 700 times the distance of Earth to the moon.
The interstellar comet is simply passing through our solar system and will eventually exit back into interstellar space, never to be seen again. As of June, orbital data indicates 3I/ATLAS is now about 1 billion miles away, well beyond Jupiter as it blazes farther into the outer reaches of the solar system.
In fact, its path out of our cosmic neighborhood began at the end of October 2025 ever since 3I/ATLAS made its closest approach to the sun.
NASA’s online simulation Eyes on the Solar System shows the location and path of 3I/ATLAS as it moves through our solar system. You can also keep up to date with the comet’s movements where it’s catalogued by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
(This story was updated to include a video about 3I/Atlas.)
Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@usatodayco.com
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