Galileo Flies by Asteroid Ida

Date: August 28, 1993 • Location: Rome, Italy

The NASA spacecraft Galileo flew by the asteroid 243 Ida and took photographs that later revealed the first known asteroid moon (both pictured).

Galileo was an American robotic space probe that studied the planet Jupiter and its moons, as well as the asteroids Gaspra and Ida. Named after the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, it consisted of an orbiter and an entry probe. It was delivered into Earth orbit on October 18, 1989, by Space Shuttle Atlantis, during STS-34. Galileo arrived at Jupiter on December 7, 1995, after gravitational assist flybys of Venus and Earth, and became the first spacecraft to orbit an outer planet.