Key facts
- Category
- Asteroids
- Object class
- S-type near-Earth asteroid
- Mass
- ~35 billion metric tons
- Scale fact
- 535 mmaximum extent
- Estimated age
- ~4.5 billion years
- Composition
- Silicate rock (rubble pile)
25143 Itokawa
535 mmaximum extent
535m
Details
25143 Itokawa is the small near-Earth asteroid that Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft landed on in 2005, scooping up grains and returning them to Earth in 2010: the first sample ever brought back from an asteroid. Hayabusa revealed it to be a rubble pile, a loose heap of fragments held together by gravity rather than a single solid rock.
Hayabusa returned microscopic grains from Itokawa to Earth in 2010, completing the first asteroid sample-return mission. Images and laboratory analyses tell the same history: an older, larger parent body was heated and shattered, and some of its fragments later reassembled under their mutual gravity. The samples also linked an S-type asteroid directly to LL ordinary chondrite meteorites.
Links
- Preset views
- Wikipedia
- 25143 Itokawa on Wikipedia
- Universe journey
- Asteroid belt & Jupiter
Size neighbors
Objects near 25143 Itokawa on the scale
On the logarithmic size axis, 25143 Itokawa falls between Dimorphos and 101955 Bennu. Compared below with other objects classed as S-type near-Earth asteroid.
Shared physical scale
26.0km
Sources
References for 25143 Itokawa
Measurements and descriptive context are compiled by the Scale of Space team from the references below. If you find an error, write to hello@scaleofspace.org.
- 25143 Itokawa on Wikipedia
- Visual reference: Wikimedia Commons (Hayabusa 2005 / JAXA, CC BY 4.0)
Continue with nearby objects or open the full scale.
About
Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.
Guides explain selected parts of that range, while focused views filter the objects by subject.