Cosmic fidget spinner: Hayabusa2 to land on smallest asteroid ever with 5-minute days
SMRTR summary
Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft faces new challenges as astronomers discover asteroid 1998 KY26 is just 11 meters across and completes one rotation every five minutes—much smaller and faster than previously thought. This tiny size, comparable to the spacecraft itself, complicates JAXA's planned 2031 touchdown mission, though it offers an unprecedented opportunity to study an asteroid class never observed up close.
SMRTR provides this summary for quick context. The original article belongs to Interesting Engineering.
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