near-Earth asteroid
Itokawa
A small, peanut-shaped rubble-pile asteroid and the source of the first asteroid samples returned to Earth by Japan's Hayabusa.
- Distance from Earth today
- 212.5 million km1.420 AU · light: 11 min 49 s
- Distance from the Sun today
- 217.0 million km1.451 AU
- As of
- 2 November 2026position from NASA/JPL orbital elements
Where it is today
Top view of the plane of Earth’s orbit, compressed distance scale. Open on the big map with the time slider →
Facts
- Diameter
- 0.33 km
- Dimensions
- 0.535 × 0.294 × 0.209 km
- Mass
- 0.0000000315 × 10¹⁸ kg
- Density
- 1,900 kg/m³
- Rotation period
- 12.1 h
- Semi-major axis
- 1.324 AU (198.1 million km)
- Perihelion
- 0.953 AU
- Aphelion
- 1.695 AU
- Orbital period
- 1.52 years
- Orbital eccentricity
- 0.280
- Orbital inclination
- 1.6°
- Last perihelion
- 18 September 2025
- Next perihelion
- 28 March 2027
- Minimum orbit distance from Earth’s orbit (MOID)
- 0.013 AU (1.95 million km)
Source of the figures: JPL Small-Body Database (public domain).
Discovery: 1998 – LINEAR survey
Description
Itokawa is a small near-Earth asteroid discovered by the LINEAR survey in 1998 and named after Hideo Itokawa, a pioneer of Japanese rocketry. In 2005 JAXA's Hayabusa spacecraft explored it, revealing a peanut-shaped rubble pile of loosely bound boulders and gravel with smooth, dusty regions and no large craters. Despite many technical problems, Hayabusa collected tiny grains from the surface and returned them to Earth in 2010, the first samples ever brought back from an asteroid. Their analysis confirmed that common stony meteorites come from asteroids like Itokawa.