USGS / NASA / JPL
It was 30 years ago today that asteroid Gaspra became the first object in the Main Asteroid Belt to be visited by a robotic explorer...which was NASA's Galileo spacecraft as it made its way to Jupiter (where Galileo would arrive on December 7, 1995).
I was in 6th grade when the Gaspra flyby took place—and it was one of the coolest space highlights for me that year! (I started becoming obsessed with space exploration back in 3rd grade.)
Galileo visited another asteroid named Ida on August 28, 1993. On February 17, 1994, a member of Galileo's mission team discovered that a small moon that would later be named Dactyl orbited Ida. I probably should've waited till 2023 and '24 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of these events, respectively. Oh well.
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