A STRANGE, TUMBLING ROTATION
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Hutton and Ostro, whose research is published in the October, 1995 edition of Science, said
that Toutatis is one of the strangest objects in the solar system. It has an irregular shape and a
complex tumbling rotation. The article states that the vast majority of asteroids and all planets spin
about a single axis like a football thrown in a perfect spiral. However Toutatis tumbles like "a
flubbed pass." As a result of this strange rotation, Toutatis does not have a fixed North pole like
the Earth. Its North pole wanders along a curve on the asteroid about every 5.4 days. Toutatis
doesn't even have anything that could be defined as a "day," Hutton says. Its rotation is determined
by two kinds of motion with periods of 5.4 and 7.3 Earth days, so the asteroid's orientation with
respect to the solar system never repeats. |
| CLOSE APPROACH PREDICTED FOR 2004 |
On September 29, 2004, the asteroid Toutatis will pass four lunar distances from the Earth --
which is four times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. This will be the closest known
approach of any comet or asteroid between now and the year 2060. Because of its strange
rotation pattern, its trajectory cannot be accurately predicted more than a few centuries in
advance. And among asteroids whose orbits cross that of earth, Toutatis's orbit is thought to be
among the most chaotic.
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EARTH-CROSSING ASTEROID TO MAKE CLOSE APPROACH IN 2004
