Program: GS-2007B-Q-4

The thermal YORP-effect may either spin-up or spin-down irregularly shaped asteroids, explaining several puzzling observations of asteroidal properties such as the large fraction of binary near-Earth objects and the overabundance of fast and slow-rotating main-belt asteroids. Recently we have reported one of the first detections of YORP acting on the small Near-Earth Asteroid (54509) YORP. Future precise observations of this NEO will be difficult, as its current orbital evolution will take it further from Earth over the next 50 years. We propose observing (54509) in cycle 80 to (a) improve our measurement of the strength of the YORP effect and (b) measure its taxonomic class and hence constrain its surface mineralogy.