The Asteroid Gaspra - Facts, Information, & Pictures

The Asteroid Gaspra was discovered in 1916 by astronomer Grigori Neujmin.  It was first visited by NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which took the closets photographs yet.  Gaspra is found in the Asteroid Belt and orbits the Sun at an average distance of 31 million kilometers (206 million miles).   

Gaspra is believed to be a fragment of a once larger object that was blown apart in a collision.  Gaspra is 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) long, 12 kilometers (7.4 miles) wide, and  11 kilometers (6.8 miles) thick.  It has very little gravity, so when a object strikes it, it leaves well defined craters and rims.