243 Ida

asteroid · space exploration · moons

A distant rock. 243 Ida is an asteroid located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, discovered way back in 1884 by an Austrian astronomer named Johann Palisa.

Visited by a robot. In 1993, a spacecraft called Galileo zoomed past Ida and took pictures of it up close, making Ida only the second asteroid ever visited by a human-made machine.

Has a tiny moon. What made Ida super special was that it turned out to have its own small moon orbiting around it, the very first asteroid moon ever discovered.

Named from myth. Scientists named it after Ida, a nymph from ancient Greek mythology, following the tradition of giving asteroids names from mythology.

Common asteroid type. Ida is an S-type asteroid, which means it's made mostly of rock and metal, and it belongs to a family called the Koronis asteroids.