Europa Clipper’s Ultraviolet Spectrograph Views 3I/ATLAS

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is seen in this composite image from the Europa Ultraviolet Spectrograph (Europa-UVS) instrument aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft. Combining multiple wavelengths of UV light, the image shows the coma of gas (blue and green) and dust (red) that surrounds the comet’s nucleus. The central region of the image shows an area of dense gas surrounding the comet nucleus. Bright horizontal streaks are aligned with the comet’s dust and ion/plasma tails, which extend beyond the 6 million miles (10 million kilometers) viewed here. Europa Clipper observed 3I/ATLAS on Nov. 6, 2025, for a period of about seven hours, from a distance of around 102 million miles (164 million kilometers).

Launched in October 2024, Europa Clipper is currently en route to the Jupiter system, arriving in April 2030. The mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

For more information about Europa Clipper, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/europa-clipper/

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SWRI