Toutatis
Key facts
- What it is
- Near-Earth asteroid (Apollo group)
- Size
- About 4.5 km long
- Discovered
- 1989, by Christian Pollas
- Spacecraft
- Chang'e 2 fly-by, 2012
- Orbit group
- Apollo
- Average distance from the Sun
- 2.54 au (about 380 million km)
- Time to go round the Sun
- 4.1 years
- Closest and farthest from the Sun
- 0.96 to 4.13 au
- Tilt of its orbit
- 0.4°
- Closest its orbit comes to Earth's
- 970,000 km (2.5 times the Moon's distance)
- Spins once every
- 7.3 days
An au (astronomical unit) is Earth's average distance from the Sun, about 150 million km. Orbit figures are from open tracking data, figures last updated 1 Nov 2026.
Toutatis is an elongated asteroid about 4.5 kilometres long that does not spin neatly like most bodies. Instead it tumbles, turning around more than one axis at once, so its motion never quite repeats. Radar images made during its close passes in the 1990s and 2000s revealed this unusual tumbling, as well as its lumpy two-part shape.
Christian Pollas discovered Toutatis on 4 January 1989 at the Caussols observatory in southern France. It is named after a Celtic god mentioned in the Asterix comics, where the villagers' only fear is that the sky might fall on their heads.
Toutatis has a long orbit that stretches out to the main belt and comes back across Earth's path, and it is close to a resonance with Jupiter. For many years this brought it near Earth roughly every four years. In September 2004 it passed about 1.5 million kilometres away, around four times the distance to the Moon, and could be seen with binoculars.
On 13 December 2012 China's Chang'e 2 spacecraft, which had already finished its mission at the Moon, flew past Toutatis within a few kilometres of its surface. It photographed a body with a large end and a small end joined at a neck, scattered with boulders. The images supported the idea that Toutatis is a contact binary, two bodies that came together gently.
Toutatis is classed as a potentially hazardous asteroid, but its orbit is very well measured and there is no risk of a collision for centuries to come.
Coming close to Earth
Its next passes within about 30 million km of Earth, worked out from its orbit. Each one is a safe miss.
| Date | Distance | In Moon distances |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Nov 2069 | 3,000,000 km | 7.7 |