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Last year a group of us (Pro/Am) tried to observe the YORP effect on asteroid Itokawa. The aim was to observe a change in the rotation period of the object. Unfortunately we could not detect any change in the period outside the period error margins (+/- 0.0001hrs).
The Nature article is quite short - 2 pages (one of the benefits of doing Swinburne Online is access to all these journals) and doesn't go into any detail. Apollos is 1.7km in diameter and has a period of 3.065hrs and the paper suggests a spin up of 1 rotation in 40 yrs.
Cheers
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