MOSCOW, December 19. /TASS/. The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS poses no threat to Earth as it is located too far from our planet, but if necessary, it can be "sent to Jupiter," Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday.

"The Moon is 400,000 kilometers away from us [Earth], and the object you are talking about is currently hundreds of millions of kilometers away. I don't think it poses any threat to us," Putin said during the combined Direct Line Q&A session and year-end press conference headlined "Results of the Year."

"Let's send it [the comet] to Jupiter! And by the beginning of next year, the comet would have left the Solar System," Putin added.

According to the president, Russian scientists keep this issue under control and "are well aware of ongoing developments regarding this comet."

Moreover, Putin recalled, this comet has a different origin than the already familiar comets, which is why it behaves differently: "There is a different shell, and when it approaches closer to the Sun, several other processes occur on its surface, including in the tail of this comet, it seems that there is something different there."

3I/ATLAS is the third interstellar celestial body discovered by astronomers in the entire history of observations. The first of these was the asteroid Oumuamua, discovered in the autumn of 2017, and the second was the comet 2I/Borisov, detected by Russian astronomer Gennady Borisov in August 2019.