A prime candidate for space mining is spinning so fast that it completes a full rotation every ninety seconds, making it impossible to land on.
Asteroid 2022 OB5 was considered one of the best targets for commercial mining because of its easy-to-reach orbit. New high-speed camera observations show it is an ultra-fast rotator spinning like a top. This extreme speed creates centrifugal forces that would fling any mining equipment right off the surface. It proves that accessibility is about more than just distance, the physical behavior of the rock is the real deal-breaker. We may find that the most reachable resources in our solar system are the ones we physically cannot touch. This discovery recalibrates the entire future of the space-mining industry.
Accessible does not mean exploitable: HiPERCAM reveals the ultra-fast rotation of 2022 OB$_5$
arXiv · 2605.04784
2022 OB$_5$ is a sub-10-metre Apollo-type near-Earth asteroid whose orbital configuration placed it among the most dynamically accessible small bodies in near-Earth space, motivating its selection as the target of the first commercial asteroid-prospecting mission. We present its first photometric characterisation, based on high-cadence simultaneous five-band $u_sg_sr_si_sz_s$ observations obtained with HiPERCAM at the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC). Analysis of the light curves yields a r