Sometimes, "the universe comes to us," writes the European Space Agency — the third time now since 2017. What is it and are we prepared?

Late in the evening on July 1, a telescope in Chile that is part of the global, NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) picked up on a new moving dot in the sky, an object traveling past the orbit of Jupiter.

Astronomers have observed an object that originated from beyond our solar system, thought to be an interstellar comet, speeding through our celestial neighborhood.