Gaspra4

PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011

PHOTO CAPTION GALILEO
December 1, 1992 P-41383
TOP GLL/GA6

This montage of 11 images taken by the Galileo spacecraft as
it flew by the asteroid Gaspra on October 29, 1991, shows Gaspra
growing progressively larger in the field of view of Galileo's
solid-state imaging camera as the spacecraft approached the
asteroid. Sunlight is coming from the right. Gaspra is roughly
17 kilometers (10 miles) long, 10 kilometers (6 miles) wide.

The earliest view (upper left) was taken 5 3/4 hours before
closest approach when the spacecraft was 164,000 kilometers
(102,000 miles) from Gaspra, the last (lower right)at a range of
16,000 kilometers (10,000 miles), 30 minutes before closest
approach.

Gaspra spins once in roughly 7 hours, so these images
capture almost one full rotation of the asteroid. Gaspra spins
counterclockwise; its north pole is to the upper left, and the
"nose" which points upward in the first image, is seen rotating
back into shadow, emerging at lower left, and rotating to upper
right. Several craters are visible on the newly seen sides of
Gaspra, but none approaches the scale of the asteroid's radius.
Evidently, Gaspra lacks the large craters common on the surfaces
of many planetary satellites, consistent with Gaspra's
comparatively recent origin from the collisional breakup of a
larger body.

The Galileo project, whose primary mission is the
exploration of the Jupiter system in 1995-97, is managed for
NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications by the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory.

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Reference: mysteries-and-strangeness.blogspot.com