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2025 may be over, but it gave us one last gift: another weird asteroid to obsess over. Fittingly, it’s got 2025 in its name.
Asteroid 2025 MN45 is a 710-meter chunk of ancient space debris, which makes it longer than two Eiffel Towers end to end. Or, using my preferred unit of measurement, approximately 3,495 standard hot dogs (SHDs) in length.
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Its size is only half of what makes it remarkable. The other half is that it’s spinning way too fast for its size. It’s been clocked at spinning once every 1.88 minutes, making it the fastest rotating asteroid of its size ever detected, according to a statement released by the Vera C. Ruin Observatory.
Scientists Just Found a Huge Asteroid Spinning Faster Than Any of Its Size
The discovery comes from scientists using the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera, the largest digital camera ever built. Asteroids are considered piles of rubble floating through space, just loose collections of rocks with gravity barely holding them all together.
Spin too fast, and they fly apart. For an asteroid to rotate faster than once every 2.2 hours, serious structural integrity. To spin once every two minutes, it needs to be exceptionally strong.
Asteroid 2025 MN45 is exceptionally strong, which doesn’t make sense given how big it is. According to study lead author Sarah Greenstreet of NSF NOIRLab, 2025 MN45 would need a cohesive strength comparable to solid rock just to survive its own speed. And yet, doing pirouettes among the stars.
2025 MN45 is setting records by barely edging out 2025 MJ71, a near-Earth object spinning every 1.9 minutes, with several other asteroids trailing close behind. Still, it’s the first time an asteroid 500 meters or larger has been observed rotating this fast.
