We predict that the YORP thermal-emission effect can be directly detected through a measurable increase in the rotation period of the several-hundred-meter near-Earth asteroid 25143 Itokawa. The fractional change of Itokawa's rotation rate in between 2001 and 2004 should be , significantly larger than its currently estimated uncertainty . The corresponding change of sidereal rotation phase, normalized to unity in a cycle, is in January 2004, producing h delay of lightcurve maximum.
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Vokrouhlický et al. (2004) studied this question.