Asteroid
A diamond-shaped near-Earth asteroid visited and sampled by Japan's Hayabusa2 mission.
| Type | Asteroid |
|---|---|
| Distance from the Sun | 1.19 AU |
| Diameter | 1 km |
| Mass | 4.50 × 10¹¹ kg |
| Temperature | -46°C |
| Orbital period | 474 days |
| Rotation period | 7.63 hours |
| Apparent magnitude | 17.5 |
| Redshift | 0 |
| Discovered | 1999 |
Asteroids are rocky leftovers from the solar system's formation, most of them confined to the belt between Mars and Jupiter where Jupiter's gravity kept them from ever assembling into a planet.
At 1 km across, Ryugu is less than a thousandth of the diameter of Earth.
Its mass is less than a thousandth of the mass of Earth.
It keeps an average distance of 1.19 AU from the Sun, so sunlight takes 10 minutes to reach it.
A single orbit takes 1.3 years.
An average temperature of 227 K works out at -46 degrees Celsius, colder than the 15 degrees Earth averages.
It has been on record since 1999.
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