Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft

Final target of Japanese Spacecraft would be Asteroid 1998 KY26 or an object of Technological Origin   

After successfully rendezvousing with near-Earth asteroid Ryugu in June 2018 and sending a sampled cache of rocks back to Earth, Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft is now making its long journey to its next destination, a tiny and rapidly spinning asteroid dubbed 1998 KY26. The spacecraft is expected to reach the mysterious space rock by July 2031, giving scientists plenty of time to come up with theories as to what it could find once it gets there. Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft is heading towards its final target; a small, rapidly rotating asteroid, believed to be around the size of a spacecraft. According to a new and intriguing paper (though not necessarily with correct conclusions) there may be a very good reason for that, with the headline being that it may be of technological origin.

1998 KY26 is an intriguing new candidate for an entirely new class of objects. In 2017, interstellar visitor ‘Oumuamua, the first object from beyond the solar system to have ever been observed, inspired scientists to categorize it as a “dark comet,” a class of asteroids which share some behaviors with comets. (A brief refresher: asteroids are lumps of rock, ice or dust that orbit the Sun but are too small to be classified as planets, while comets are “dirty snowballs” that release gases to form a tail behind them as they pass by the Sun.). Hayabusa2, the Japanese space agency's (JAXA's) asteroid sample collecting spacecraft has already been on one hell of a journey, collecting samples of material from asteroid Ryugu, before dropping off those samples during a flyby of Earth. In 2020, shortly before those samples were returned to us, JAXA announced a new target for the spacecraft, and a long extension to the mission. "The destination will be the small asteroid 1998 KY26. This is a long-term mission that exceeds 10 years and, after an itinerary of various events, we aim to rendezvous with the rapidly rotating 1998 KY26," JAXA said. "We may also attempt particular challenges, such as dropping a target marker or touchdown."

The task, it turns out, is more difficult than initially anticipated. In 2024, a team of astronomers used the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory, expecting to confirm previous estimates of the object's size and mass, but found that it may be a very tricky object to land on. “We're surprised to discover that the object looks completely different from what was expected; it was much smaller, three/four times smaller than expected. It's spinning faster, twice as fast. And also the composition itself… It's much brighter," lead author Dr Toni Santana-Ros, a planetary scientist at the University of Alicante and University of Barcelona, explained. "The funny thing is that the object is about 11 meters in diameter, and the spacecraft itself is 6 meters [20 feet]. So it's more than half of the object it’s going to visit. It's quite a funny thing!” But according to Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who has spent years pondering the nature of ‘Oumuamua and its unusual behavior, 1998 KY26 could be something else entirely. Loeb and his colleagues suggest the object could instead be a long-lost relic of the Soviet space program.

According to a new preprint paper that is yet to be peer-reviewed, JAXA may be in for one more surprise as they approach the object when it approaches it in July 2031. Looking at the object's path and comparing it to potential paths of an old Soviet-era spacecraft which failed en route to study Mars's "doomed moon" Phobos, the team suggests that humans may have gotten pretty close to the object when we assembled it. Launched on July 7, 1988, Phobos 1 operated normally for a few months, before falling out of contact with Earth on 02 September, 1988, the result of an incorrect sequence sent to the spacecraft, a single hyphen out of place. The mistake may have unintended consequences decades down the line, with the suggestion that the asteroid targeted by JAXA may actually be another spacecraft, setting the scene for the Spider-Man points at Spider-Man meme in space. "Our new paper shows that two propulsive velocity thrusts (∆Vs) combined at 1.9 km's/second, the first just after loss of mission and the second in May 1996, allow the orbits and phases of the two bodies to align, with an arbitrarily low separation in velocity-position space," astronomer Avi Loeb explains. "There is also evidence that 1.9 km's/second was within the performance envelope of Phobos 1, which had a powerful nitric acid and amine-based autonomous thruster for Mars Orbital Insertion."

While the team points out that their work is far from conclusive, there may be a few reasons to take the hypothesis seriously, at least, including evidence that the spacecraft delivered some thrust shortly after the mission was unexpectedly cut short. “In particular, we identify it as potentially a relic of a historical Russian mission to Mars, the Phobos 1 probe, which suffered a failure 2 months after the launch in July 1988, due to upload of a faulty command,” Loeb explained.  Phobos 1 failed to send back a signal in August 1988 due to what later turned out to be a typo, a missing hyphen, in a command that shut down crucial systems. Loeb and his colleagues suggest that the probe’s thruster firings may have put it in a “similar” orbit to 1998 KY26’s, and that the “two orbits converge and are statistically compatible.” The researchers also argue that the defunct spacecraft and dark comet share roughly the same size and a “quite elongated” shape. According to the team, the spacecraft idea could explain the object's high reflectivity, as well as why it has kept itself together despite its fast spin, behavior not expected of a rubble pile asteroid (though a more solid structure, or factors we have yet to discover, could also explain this, too). The team adds that the object appears to be "quite elongated", given the changes in its brightness as seen by humanity's telescopes.

Still, the hypothesis is quite a stretch, given the vastness of space. However, Loeb argued that scientists should nonetheless extend their “training data set to include not just rocks and icebergs but also the space objects launched by humans over the past 69 years” just in case. If 1998 KY26 does turn out to be technological in nature, Loeb argued that the finding could support his controversial theory that ‘Oumuamua may have also been a piece of technology sent to us by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization. I wonder whether the mainstream of comet experts will acknowledge that 1I/’Oumuamua may have not been a natural ‘dark comet’ if it becomes clear that their so-called ‘dark comet’ 1998 KY26 is technological in origin, beyond any reasonable doubt,” he pondered. It's a fun idea, and it would be quite something to see in 2031. If it turned out to be correct, it would be the first time humanity has accidentally attempted to land on the surface of a second, equally-sized spacecraft, for example. But for now, the work is an interesting "what if" rather than a solid conclusion, or probable scenario.

"In anticipation of the Hayabusa2 observations in 2031, which will be decisive in resolving the origin of this object, we encourage further observational, dynamical, and theoretical studies aimed at more tightly constraining the nature and properties of 1998 KY26," the team concludes. Nobody knows for sure what Hayabusa2 will find. Besides, thanks to the asteroid’s extremely fast spin, it could prove extremely difficult to land on. But Loeb and his colleagues argue we should keep an open mind, just in case it turned out to be a long-lost Soviet era spacecraft.

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Production of Uranium worldwide

       World’s Uranium and it's Production analysis

Nuclear power is regaining momentum as countries seek stable electricity supplies and lower-carbon energy sources. This has pushed uranium, the fuel used in nuclear reactors, back into focus. This visualization uses data from the World Nuclear Association to show annual uranium production by country. Kazakhstan remains the dominant supplier by a wide margin, while countries like Canada and Namibia have rapidly expanded production in recent years. About three-quarters of the world's production of uranium from mines is from Kazakhstan, Canada and Namibia. In 2024 Kazakhstan produced the largest share of uranium from mines (39% of world supply), followed by Canada (24%) and Namibia (12%).  Canada and Namibia sharply increased output as nuclear demand and uranium prices recovered. US uranium production remains near historic lows despite renewed focus on domestic supply security. Kazakhstan produced 23,270 tonnes of uranium in 2024, accounting for more than one-third of global output.

Rank Country          2015(Tonnes)   2024(Tonnes)  Change (2015-2024)

1            Kazakhstan                  23,607                  23,270                             -1.4%

2              Canada                  13,325                  14,309                              7.4%

3             Namibia                  2,993                   7,333                             145.0%

4              Australia                  5,654                   4,598                             -18.7%

5             Uzbekistan                  2,385                   4,000                                   67.7%

6             Russia                          3,055                    2,738                              -10.4%

7              China                          1,616                   1,600                              -1.0%

8              Niger                          4,116                    962                             -76.6%

9             India                           385                    500                              29.9%

10          South Africa                   393                    200                              -49.1%

11            Ukraine                         1,200                     288                              -76.0%

12            USA                          1,256                     260                              -79.3%

--           Others                           357                     155                              -56.6%

--         World total                 60,342                    60,213                               -0.2%

US uranium production nearly disappeared in 2020, falling to just six tonnes as low prices made domestic mining uneconomical. However, the sector has started recovering amid higher uranium prices and geopolitical concerns surrounding global supply chains. Restrictions on Russian uranium imports have also increased interest in rebuilding domestic production capacity. Even after rebounding from near-zero production in 2020, the US produced just 260 tonnes of uranium in 2024 versus more than 23,000 tonnes in Kazakhstan. The gap highlights how dependent global nuclear fuel markets remain on a small number of suppliers. The country combines large sandstone uranium deposits with low-cost in-situ recovery mining techniques, which are generally cheaper and less labor-intensive than conventional mining. State-backed producer Kazatomprom has also helped scale production efficiently over the last decade. Kazakhstan also ranks second globally in uranium reserves. While Kazakhstan’s output dipped during the pandemic years, production rebounded strongly as uranium demand and prices recovered.

Mining methods have been changing. In 1990, 55% of world production came from underground mines, but this shrunk dramatically to 1999, with 33% then. From 2000 the new Canadian mines increased it again. In 2024 in situ leach (ISL, also called in situ recovery, ISR) mining accounted for over 50% of production:-

Method                                                                  Percentage

In situ leach (ISL)                                                                         52%

Underground & open pit (except Olympic Dam                         44%

By-product                                                                                 4%

Canada ranked as the world’s second-largest uranium producer in 2024, with output rising to 14,309 tonnes. Production had previously collapsed in 2020 due to mine shutdowns and weak market conditions, but the restart of major projects such as Cigar Lake and McArthur River helped drive a sharp recovery. Namibia also strengthened its position as a major supplier, producing 7,333 tonnes in 2024. The country has emerged as one of the fastest-growing uranium suppliers in the world, supported by large open-pit mines and rising foreign investment tied to growing nuclear fuel demand.

Conventional mines have a mill where the ore is crushed, ground and then leached with sulfuric acid to dissolve the uranium oxides. At the mill of a conventional mine, or the treatment plant of an ISL operation, the uranium then separated by ion exchange before being dried and packed, usually as U3O8. Some mills and ISL operations (especially in the USA) use carbonate leaching instead of sulfuric acid, depending on the orebody. Where uranium is recovered as a by-product, e.g. of copper or phosphate, the treatment process is likely to be more complex. During the 1990s the uranium production industry was consolidated by takeovers, mergers and closures, but this has diversified again with Kazakhstan's multinational ownership structure. Over half of uranium mine production is from state-owned mining companies, some of which prioritize secure supply over market considerations. In 2022, the top 10 companies by production contributed over 90% of the world's uranium production:-

Company                                     tonnes U             Percentage of world total

Kazatomprom                                           12,463                                           21

Cameco                                                   10,193                                           17

Orano                                                    6815                                           11

CGN                                                   5761                                           10

Uranium One                                           5829                                           10

Navoi Mining                                           4000                                            7

CNNC                                                   3286                                            6

ARMZ                                                   2738                                            5

BHP                                                         2693                                            5

General Atomics/Quasar                           1808                                            3

Other                                                   4627                                            8

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