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When the body is not exactly rigid, but can flex and bend or contain liquid that sloshes around, it can dissipate energy through its internal degrees of freedom. In this case, the body still has constant angular momentum, but its energy would decrease, until it reaches the minimal point. As analyzed geometrically above, this happens when the body's angular velocity is exactly aligned with its axis of maximal moment of inertia.
This happened to [[Explorer 1#Results|Explorer 1]], the first [[satellite]] launched by the [[United States]] in 1958. The elongated body of the spacecraft had been designed to spin about its long (least-[[inertia]]) axis but refused to do so, and instead started [[Precession|precessing]] due to energy [[dissipation]] from flexible structural elements. It also played a role in the [[Solar_and_Heliospheric_Observatory#Near_loss_of_SOHO|near-loss of the joint NASA-ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory]] in 1998, when an unintentional spin about the spacecraft-Sun axis destabilized the control laws, leading to the spacecraft tumbling until internal dissipation (in its liquid hydrazine tanks) caused it to settle around its maximum moment axis, such that the Sun remained in the plane of the solar array.
In general, celestial bodies large or small would converge to a constant rotation around its axis of maximal moment of inertia. Whenever a celestial body is found in a complex rotational state, it is either due to a recent impact or tidal interaction, or is a fragment of a recently disrupted progenitor.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Efroimsky |first=Michael |date=March 2002 |title=Euler, Jacobi, and Missions to Comets and Asteroids |journal=Advances in Space Research |volume=29 |issue=5 |pages=725–734 |doi=10.1016/S0273-1177(02)00017-0|arxiv=astro-ph/0112054 |bibcode=2002AdSpR..29..725E |s2cid=1110286 }}</ref>
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