The space probe Galileo took the closest ever picture of an asteroid on 29 October. The asteroid, Gaspra, was at a distance of 16 200 kilometres and was photographed through a green filter.
The fly-past of Gaspra was originally not in Galileo's mission. The probe, which is heading for a rendezvous with Jupiter and its moons in December 1995, was going to fly past a larger, more impressive asteroid. All that changed when Galileo's launch was delayed for three years by the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. Galileo is now flying to Jupiter on a looping trajectory which involves it passing the Earth twice and Venus once.
The low-quality photograph of Gaspra was sent back to Earth painfully slowly with Galileo's small antenna. Its main antenna, essential for sending pictures of Jupiter's moons, has failed to open, wrecking one of the main elements of the mission.
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