In this series of photos distributed by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in Tokyo Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2005, an asteroid, informally named Itokawa, after Hideo Itokawa, the father of rocket science in Japan, is shown from different phases while it revolves on its axis once in 12 hours. These pictures were photographed between Saturday, Sept. 10 and Sunday, Sept. 11, 2005 and transmitted to JAXA by a camera attached to the Hayabusa probe shortly before reaching the asteroid, about 290 million kilometers (180 million miles) away between Earth and Mars. The Hayabusa probe, launched in May 2003 and reached within 20 kilometers (12 miles) of the asteroid Monday, Sept. 12, 2005, will hover around it for about three months before making its unprecedented - and very brief - landing to recover the samples in early November. The asteroid is only 2,300 feet (690 meters) long and 1,000 feet (300 meters) wide, and has a gravitational pull only one-one-hundred-thousandth of Earth's. (AP Photo/Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, HO)