951 Gaspra

Asteroid 951 Gaspra is a small, irregularly shaped celestial body located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Discovered on July 30, 1916, by the Russian astronomer Grigory Neujmin, Gaspra is relatively small, measuring approximately 19 kilometers (12 miles) in its longest dimension. Gaspra orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 329 million kilometers (204 million miles) and completes an orbit roughly every 3.29 Earth years. In October 1991, the NASA spacecraft Galileo performed a historic flyby of Gaspra, becoming the first spacecraft to encounter and study an asteroid up close. The encounter provided close-up images and scientific data, revealing Gaspra's irregular shape and surface features such as craters and ridges, contributing valuable insights into the morphology and characteristics of asteroids within the asteroid belt.