Astronomers Discover Fastest-Spinning Asteroid Of Its Size

In a groundbreaking discovery, astronomers have identified an asteroid that defies conventional understanding, spinning at an unprecedented rate of once every 112 seconds. This diminutive, yet remarkably resilient, celestial ___, designated 2025 MN45, has been hailed as the fastest-spinning asteroid of its size, boasting a diameter exceeding 500 meters.

According to Sarah Greenstreet, an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle, “It’s unlike anything we’ve been able to see before.” The asteroid’s extraordinary rotation period, significantly surpassing the 30-minute to 1-hour benchmarks of its predecessors, has sparked intense interest among scientists. As Greenstreet noted during a January 7 news conference at the American Astronomical Society meeting, “That makes our fastest-spinning asteroid much, much faster than anything we reliably knew about previously.” The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, a cutting-edge facility tasked with imaging the entire southern sky every few nights for a decade, has yielded a treasure trove of data, including the discovery of 2025 MN45. The observatory’s “first look” images, captured over nine nights last spring and released in June, revealed approximately 2,100 solar system objects, with around 90 percent remaining previously unseen.