On July 1, 2025, the Deep Random Survey remote telescope in Chile, part of the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) project, spotted a new comet. But it wasn't just any old comet: This one isn't gravitationally bound by the sun, which means it originated outside of our solar system.

Named 3I/ATLAS, the comet is only the third known interstellar object to enter our solar system, and it's the largest and brightest one yet. Perhaps unsurprisingly, researchers around the world are training every instrument at their ready on it, including NASA's new space observatory SPHEREx.

SPHEREx — short for "Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer" — has detected an abundance of carbon dioxide gas in the fuzzy coma surrounding 3I/ATLAS,

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