{"id":234145,"date":"2026-03-27T03:20:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T08:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/hubble-detects-first-ever-spin-reversal-of-tiny-comet"},"modified":"2026-03-27T03:20:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T08:20:19","slug":"hubble-detects-first-ever-spin-reversal-of-tiny-comet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/hubble-detects-first-ever-spin-reversal-of-tiny-comet","title":{"rendered":"Hubble detects first-ever spin reversal of tiny comet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/hubble-detects-first-ever-spin-reversal-of-tiny-comet2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Astronomers using NASA\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope have found evidence that the spinning of a small comet slowed and then reversed its direction of rotation, offering a dramatic example of how volatile activity can affect the spin and physical evolution of small bodies in the solar system. This is the first time researchers have observed evidence of a comet reversing its spin.<\/p>\n<p>The object, comet 41P\/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kres\u00e1k, or 41P for short, likely originated in the Kuiper Belt, and was flung into its current trajectory by Jupiter\u2019s gravity, now visiting the inner solar system every 5.4 years.<\/p>\n<p>After its 2017 close passage around the sun, scientists found that comet 41P experienced a dramatic slowdown in its rotation. Data from NASA\u2019s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in May 2017 <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2018-01-nasa-newly-renamed-swift-mission.html\">showed<\/a> the object was spinning three times more slowly than it had in March 2017 when it was observed by the Discovery Channel Telescope at Lowell Observatory in Arizona.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Astronomers using NASA\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope have found evidence that the spinning of a small comet slowed and then reversed its direction of rotation, offering a dramatic example of how volatile activity can affect the spin and physical evolution of small bodies in the solar system. This is the first time researchers have observed evidence [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[385,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evolution","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}