54509 YORP

54509 YORP (provisional designation ) is an Earth co-orbital asteroid discovered on 3 August 2000 by the Lincoln Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) Team at Lincoln Laboratory Experimental Test Site in Socorro, New Mexico. Measurements of the rotation rate of this object provided the first observational evidence of the YORP effect, hence the name of the asteroid. The asteroid's rate of rotation is increasing at the rate of (2.0 ± 0.2) × 10−4 deg/day2 which between 2001 and 2005 caused the asteroid to rotate about 250° further than its spin rate in 2001 would have predicted. Simulations of the asteroid suggest that it may reach a rotation period of ~20 seconds near the end of its expected lifetime, which has a 75% probability of happening within the next 35 million years. The simulations also ruled out the possibility that close encounters with the Earth have been the cause of the increased spin rate.

On 2 January 2104, asteroid YORP will pass 0.00526 AU from Earth.

YORP is the largest member of a candidate asteroid family, another member of which is, that would have been formed through shedding of fragments of YORP or the breakup of a larger progenitor due to the YORP effect.