Question 1

True or false: Itokawa is shaped like a perfect sphere, similar to most asteroids.

Accepted Answer

False. Itokawa looks like a peanut or a potato—it's a rubble pile with two lobes, not spherical.

Question 2

True or false: Itokawa is only about 500 meters long, smaller than many city blocks.

Accepted Answer

True. Its longest dimension is roughly 535 meters, comparable to a small hill or a few football fields.

Question 3

True or false: Itokawa orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter in the main asteroid belt.

Accepted Answer

False. Itokawa is a near-Earth asteroid, crossing Earth's orbit, not in the main belt.

Question 4

True or false: Itokawa is the first asteroid from which a spacecraft returned samples to Earth.

Accepted Answer

True. Hayabusa brought back tiny grains from Itokawa in 2010, making it the first sample return from an asteroid.

Question 5

True or false: Itokawa was named after a Japanese rocket scientist, Hideo Itokawa.

Accepted Answer

True. The asteroid honors Hideo Itokawa, a pioneer of Japanese rocketry and the father of the space program.

Question 6

True or false: Itokawa was visited by NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission before its sample return.

Accepted Answer

False. OSIRIS-REx visited Bennu, not Itokawa. Only JAXA's Hayabusa has explored Itokawa.

Question 7

True or false: Itokawa's surface gravity is so low that a person could jump off into space.

Accepted Answer

True. With gravity about 1/100,000th of Earth's, a gentle leap would send you escaping its pull.

Question 8

True or false: Scientists found evidence of water ice on Itokawa's surface from Hayabusa data.

Accepted Answer

False. No water ice was detected; Itokawa is dry and dominated by silicates and metals.

Itokawa Trivia Questions