The SOHO spacecraft discovered its 1,500th comet, making the observatory the most successful comet detector.

The NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory made its historic discovery on June 25 that puts SOHO’s count ahead of all other discoveries of comets throughout history combined.

SOHO launched in 1995 to study solar physics and space weather, but its prime location between the sun and the Earth gives an excellent view of the space inside Earth’s orbit. The spacecraft records comets as they slowly lose ice and often disintegrate in orbit around the sun.

Roughly 85 percent of SOHO’s comet discoveries involve a collective of icy objects known as the Kreutz group. The comet’s offspring now pass within 932,000 miles (1.5 million km) of the sun, then are flung far out into the solar system on highly elliptical orbits.