Japan sent a spacecraft to a small asteroid in hopes of collecting samples that scientists will eventually study back on Earth. Only, according to a newly released research paper, the spacecraft Japan sent, Hayabusa2, might encounter a bit of an awkward problem once it reaches its destination: the asteroid it’s been chasing could actually be a broken Soviet spacecraft that it will poke and prod to no avail.
The claim comes from a new, not yet peer-reviewed paper. In it, a team of researchers argues that the object known as 1998 KY26 might not be an asteroid but rather a long-lost Soviet probe called Phobos 1, a craft that disappeared in 1988 after engineers accidentally sent it a command with a typo.
One missing hyphen was all it took to lose contact with Phobos 1, rendering it just another piece of space junk. If this turns out to be the case, it would at least make some sense, as 1998 KY26 has been a weird object to track. Some recent observations found it to be a lot smaller than everyone once thought, only about 11 meters across. It spins way faster than once believed, and reflects a weird amount of sunlight for a rock.
It also seems to be elongated. It’s beginning to sound a lot like a derelict satellite.
Japan Sent a Spacecraft to Study an Asteroid, but It Might Actually Be Soviet Space Junk
The researchers say that it’s at least theoretically possible that the trajectory Phobos 1 was on could place it on a path similar to that of 1998 KY26. So, it could be two different objects that just so happened to be following roughly the same celestial path, or those two objects could actually be one object.
Either way, we’re still a long way off from getting some actual proof of any of this. The consensus for now is that it’s a good old-fashioned rocky asteroid, possibly one belonging to a rare breed of smaller asteroids called “dark comets.” Nobody knows for sure, and even the authors of the new paper say that their hypothesis is speculative at best.
We’ll eventually find out when Hayabusa2 rendezvous with 1998 KY26 in 2031.
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