Check your subscription status, update your details and more. Two large asteroids found spinning as fast as a fairground ride Rocks in the asteroid belt rotating at ultra-fast speeds suggest our understanding of asteroid structure might be wrong Large asteroids have been found spinning so fast they should break apart, suggesting they might be stronger than we thought. Dmitrii Vavilov at the University of Washington in Seattle and his colleagues analysed some of the first data collected by the Vera C.
Rubin Observatory in Chile, which began a 10-year survey of the sky in June 2026. From a sample of more than 9000 asteroids, they measured the rotation of 260, based on a change in their brightness caused by the spinning asteroids’ irregular shapes. Of these, 66 were deemed to be super-fast rotators, spinning quickly enough to complete a rotation in less than 2.2 hours, a limit at which asteroids should no longer be able to hold themselves together under their own gravity.
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