THE ASTEROID
Image of Asteroid 243 Ida Asteroids are extremely small planets that orbit the sun and are situated primarily between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The Galileo spacecraft, a space probe launched by the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), photographed the asteroid 243 Ida, above, in August 1993. The space probe detected a moon orbiting Ida, making Ida the only asteroid known to have a satellite.