NASA revealed close-up pictures of 3I/ATLAS , the interstellar comet that’s currently racing through our solar system. The comet will eventually hightail it back into interstellar space, never to return. A comet is a cosmic snowball of frozen gases, rock, and dust that orbits the Sun, according to NASA. However, 3I/ATLAS’s speed and trajectory show that it’s not gravitationally bound to the Sun - meaning it must have originated in another star system and wandered into ours by chance.