{"id":233621,"date":"2026-03-19T03:23:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T08:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/nasas-hubble-unexpectedly-catches-comet-breaking-up"},"modified":"2026-03-19T03:23:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T08:23:00","slug":"nasas-hubble-unexpectedly-catches-comet-breaking-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/nasas-hubble-unexpectedly-catches-comet-breaking-up","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s Hubble unexpectedly catches comet breaking up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qc0dfrlA-ew?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In a happy twist of fate, NASA\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope witnessed a comet in the act of breaking apart. The chance of that happening while Hubble watched is extraordinarily minuscule. The findings are <a href=\"https:\/\/linkinghub.elsevier.com\/retrieve\/pii\/S001910352600062X\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Icarus.<\/p>\n<p>The comet K1, whose full name is C\/2025 K1 (ATLAS)\u2014not to be confused with interstellar comet 3I\/ATLAS\u2014was not the original target of the Hubble study.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSometimes the best science happens by accident,\u201d said co-investigator John Noonan, a research professor in the Department of Physics at Auburn University in Alabama. \u201cThis comet got observed because our original comet was not viewable due to some new technical constraints after we won our proposal. We had to find a new target\u2014and right when we observed it, it happened to break apart, which is the slimmest of slim chances.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a happy twist of fate, NASA\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope witnessed a comet in the act of breaking apart. The chance of that happening while Hubble watched is extraordinarily minuscule. The findings are published in the journal Icarus. The comet K1, whose full name is C\/2025 K1 (ATLAS)\u2014not to be confused with interstellar comet 3I\/ATLAS\u2014was [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}