main-belt asteroid
Gaspra
The first asteroid ever photographed up close by a spacecraft, imaged by Galileo during a flyby in 1991.
- Distance from Earth today
- 515.4 million km3.445 AU · light: 28 min 39 s
- Distance from the Sun today
- 384.6 million km2.571 AU
- As of
- 2 November 2026position from NASA/JPL orbital elements
Where it is today
Top view of the plane of Earth’s orbit, compressed distance scale. Open on the big map with the time slider →
Facts
- Diameter
- 12 km
- Dimensions
- 18.2 × 10.5 × 8.9 km
- Rotation period
- 7.0 h
- Semi-major axis
- 2.209 AU (330.5 million km)
- Perihelion
- 1.825 AU
- Aphelion
- 2.594 AU
- Orbital period
- 3.28 years
- Orbital eccentricity
- 0.174
- Orbital inclination
- 4.1°
- Last perihelion
- 28 May 2025
- Next perihelion
- 9 September 2028
- Minimum orbit distance from Earth’s orbit (MOID)
- 0.832 AU (124.4 million km)
- Albedo
- 0.246
Source of the figures: JPL Small-Body Database (public domain).
Discovery: 1916 – Grigory Neujmin
Description
Gaspra was discovered by Grigory Neujmin at the Simeiz Observatory in Crimea in 1916 and named after a nearby resort town. In October 1991 the Galileo spacecraft, en route to Jupiter, flew past it and returned the first close-up images ever taken of an asteroid. They showed a small, irregular, stony body with relatively few large craters but many small ones, indicating a young surface, possibly created when Gaspra broke off a larger parent body.