# Itokawa

*In the Solar System*

A near-Earth asteroid the size of a small town, and a pile of rubble rather than a rock - the pictures show it heaped together out of gravel with almost no craters. It is here because Hayabusa reached it in 2005 and, after a landing that went wrong, an engine failure and three years lost, brought home about 1,500 grains of it in 2010: the first material ever returned from an asteroid, and proof that the commonest meteorites come from bodies like this one.

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Radius | 0 km |
| Around the equator | 1 km |
| From the Sun | 241,667,574 km (-319,898 km/d) |
| From the Earth | 302,307,997 km (-1,453,661 km/d) |
| A signal takes | 17 min |

Distances and speed are computed from JPL Horizons trajectories and are true of 2026-09-05, changing at the rate given beside each. The interpolation itself is good to a few kilometres; what ages these figures is the date, not the arithmetic.

## Elsewhere

- On the live map: https://www.orbitalmap.space/?world=solar-system&focus=itokawa
- This object as a page: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/itokawa/
- Every object: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/
- What this site is and what it reads: https://www.orbitalmap.space/llms.txt