This news about the final asteroidal target that will be visited by Japan's Hayabusa2 satellite sounds, well, challenging.
Hayabusa2’s Final Target is 3 Times Smaller Than We Thought
It also spins twice as fast as previous estimates suggested. A spacecraft touchdown will be challenging, but not impossible."They calculated that the asteroid completes one spin every 5 minutes and 21 seconds, less time than it takes to listen to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The team then combined those new observations with the 1998 radar data to recalculate the asteroid’s size. They found that instead of being roughly 30 meters in diameter, 1998 KY26 is just 11 meters, or about the length of a telephone pole. The team published these results in Nature Communications on 18 September."
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| It's certainly not big |
Before they get to this little tiny asteroid, Hayabusa2 is also going to fly by an asteroid in July 2026. Stay tuned for more info.
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