The dark asteroid—or 1998 KY26—is very small, measuring only 11 meters across. And what exactly is a "dark comet"? It is the skeleton of a dead comet; it is defined as the remnants of a comet that has lost its ice. These remnants are thought to be an accumulation of primordial dust and rock that was once mixed with the ice or frozen materials. However, under the sun's heat, the frozen materials turned into vapor and were lost to space, leaving behind only that pile of dust and rock.
The aspect of primordial materials is the most interesting part, because comets are believed to have formed when the gas and dust cloud of a stellar nursery began to collapse to form the sun and planets. Consequently, these ancient materials could contain elements created before the sun even existed. In that case, we are talking about materials—such as molecules with pre-solar chemistry—that date back to a time before the sun's heat and radiation triggered the chemical processes that gave rise to different elements.
Scientists are asking themselves whether the key elements for the emergence of life were present in that stellar nursery cloud where the Sun and Earth were born. Was that stellar nursery something special and unique in the universe, or is it just like the ones we observe today in other parts of the galaxy? And if so, where did those elements that ultimately gave rise to life come from? How were they created? It is for all these reasons that this dark asteroid—or dark comet—is of such great interest to Japanese scientists.
They want to reach that object and bring back samples, but there are anomalous features to this dark comet. Its rotation is ultra-fast—spinning on its axis roughly every 10 or 11 minutes—which is extremely rapid for an asteroid; the centrifugal force is so strong that any loose surface material would tend to fly off. This implies that the dark comet is a solid block—but if so, how is that possible? It ought to be a conglomerate of dust and rock left behind by the sublimation of ice from that ancient comet—or perhaps it is something even stranger.
It could be a spacecraft; Harvard University cosmologist Avi Loeb recently suggested that it might be a spacecraft—though not an alien one this time. Previously, Loeb had speculatively proposed that the interstellar objects 3I/Atlas and 'Oumuamua could be spacecraft from an alien civilization—or, in the case of 'Oumuamua, the remnants of a solar sail or debris from another technological civilization in deep space. However, in an article published on Medium on May 31, Loeb speculated that this "dark comet" might actually be the Soviet spacecraft Phobos 1. Designed to study Mars—and specifically its largest moon, Phobos—the probe targeted a moon that seems to be under a "space curse," given that all three missions sent there failed.
The mission that came closest to success was the Soviet probe Phobos 2. In January 1989, it captured the first high-resolution thermal images of Phobos; however, in March 1989—just as it was preparing to approach the moon and deploy its landers—an onboard computer malfunction caused it to go silent forever. A similar fate befell Phobos 1, the craft that Avi Loeb suggests might be that "dark comet."
It successfully launched on July 7, 1988, aboard a Proton-K rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, with all systems functioning perfectly. The probe even began transmitting valuable data on cosmic rays, X-rays, solar ultraviolet light, and other elements encountered during its journey through space. However, between August 29 and 30, during a routine radio command session, a command containing a critical coding error was sent; this caused the probe to shut down the attitude control thrusters that maintained its stability, resulting in the loss of proper solar panel orientation.
Consequently, Phobos 1 stopped generating power and depleted its battery reserves. By the time the next scheduled communication session arrived on September 2, 1988, the probe was already dead—powerless and drifting through space. Could this space relic from the last century be the destination for the Japanese spacecraft? What exactly is 1998 KY26? Is it a dark comet, a lost Soviet spacecraft, or something even more unusual? We will have to wait until July 2031 to find out.
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