Is the Dark Comet 1998 KY$_{26}$ the Spacecraft Phobos 1?
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arXiv
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| Auteurs principaux: | , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| _version_ | 1866910278725140480 |
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| author | Hibberd, Adam Crowl, Adam Ballester, Carlos Gómez de Olea Loeb, Abraham |
| author_facet | Hibberd, Adam Crowl, Adam Ballester, Carlos Gómez de Olea Loeb, Abraham |
| contents | Since the discovery of new kinds of celestial bodies known as $dark~comets$, scientists have speculated about their ontology. A curious hybrid of comet and asteroid, these objects show significant non-gravitational accelerations (NGAs) yet exhibit absolutely no signs of cometary outgassing in the form of a coma or tail. The planned rendezvous of the Hayabusa2 spacecraft with 1998 KY$_{26}$ in July 2031 elevates the question of this so-called dark comet's nature beyond a purely research exercise, as the true nature of the object may have practical implications for the scientific return of the mission. This study examines the hypothesis that 1998 KY$_{26}$ may be of technogenic origin, in fact 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. We find that two propulsive DeltaVs combined at 1.9 km/s, 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 $Mahalanobis~distance$ using the covariance of the dark comet in 6D phase space. There is also evidence that 1.9 km/s was within the performance envelope of Phobos 1, which had a powerful nitric acid and amine-based autonomous thruster for Mars Orbital Insertion (MOI). |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2606_01288 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Is the Dark Comet 1998 KY$_{26}$ the Spacecraft Phobos 1? Hibberd, Adam Crowl, Adam Ballester, Carlos Gómez de Olea Loeb, Abraham Earth and Planetary Astrophysics Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Since the discovery of new kinds of celestial bodies known as $dark~comets$, scientists have speculated about their ontology. A curious hybrid of comet and asteroid, these objects show significant non-gravitational accelerations (NGAs) yet exhibit absolutely no signs of cometary outgassing in the form of a coma or tail. The planned rendezvous of the Hayabusa2 spacecraft with 1998 KY$_{26}$ in July 2031 elevates the question of this so-called dark comet's nature beyond a purely research exercise, as the true nature of the object may have practical implications for the scientific return of the mission. This study examines the hypothesis that 1998 KY$_{26}$ may be of technogenic origin, in fact 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. We find that two propulsive DeltaVs combined at 1.9 km/s, 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 $Mahalanobis~distance$ using the covariance of the dark comet in 6D phase space. There is also evidence that 1.9 km/s was within the performance envelope of Phobos 1, which had a powerful nitric acid and amine-based autonomous thruster for Mars Orbital Insertion (MOI). |
| title | Is the Dark Comet 1998 KY$_{26}$ the Spacecraft Phobos 1? |
| topic | Earth and Planetary Astrophysics Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.01288 |