Juice Spacecraft Records Stunning Anomalies As 3I/ATLAS Tells A Story Far More Extraordinary Than Anything Published In Official Press Releases

The most profound part of ESA’s announcement, however, is not the image—it is the timeline. Juice encountered 3I/ATLAS in November 2025. Juice will not arrive at Jupiter until July 2031. But 3I/ATLAS will reach Jupiter in March 2026—more than five years earlier. The spacecraft built to explore the outer moons is being outrun by an object that entered our system less than a year ago. That velocity, that trajectory, and that acceleration reinforce the same conclusion we keep returning to: this object is not behaving like any comet, asteroid, or known natural interstellar body.

What happens next is historic. ESA will release the full scientific instruments’ data on February 18 and 20, including high-resolution images from the JANUS camera and spectral composition from MAJIS, UVS, SWI, and PEP. For the first time, we will have a rigorous dataset from a spacecraft that directly observed an interstellar anomaly up close. Until then, we are left with a preliminary image whose implications are far larger than its resolution.