Who discovered asteroid 951 Gaspra and when?
951 Gaspra was discovered by Russian astronomer G. N. Neujmin in 1916. Neujmin named it after Gaspra, a Black Sea retreat associated with writers such as Gorky and Tolstoy.
Questions about 951 Gaspra
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Why was 951 Gaspra historically significant for space exploration?
951 Gaspra was the first asteroid ever to be closely approached by a spacecraft. The Galileo spacecraft flew past it on the 29th of October 1991 while en route to Jupiter, returning 57 images of the asteroid.
How big is asteroid 951 Gaspra?
951 Gaspra has a calculated surface area of about 525 square kilometres, roughly the size of the island of Guam or about half the land area of Hong Kong. It orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 2.21 astronomical units and completes one orbit in 3.29 years.
What type of asteroid is 951 Gaspra and what is it made of?
951 Gaspra is an S-type asteroid with a stony mineralogical composition. Its surface contains olivine and pyroxene in proportions of roughly 4:1 to 7:1 in favour of olivine, making it relatively olivine-rich among S-type asteroids.
How close did the Galileo spacecraft get to 951 Gaspra during the flyby?
Galileo passed within 1600 km of 951 Gaspra at a relative speed of about 8 km/s on the 29th of October 1991. The closest image was taken from a distance of 5300 km, achieving a resolution of about 54 metres per pixel.
What are the grooves on the surface of 951 Gaspra?
The grooves on 951 Gaspra are about 100 m to 300 m wide, up to 2.5 km long, and tens of metres deep. They are thought to be related to the collision that formed the Flora asteroid family and suggest that Gaspra is a single coherent body rather than a rubble pile.