Asteroid encounters 951 Gaspra 951 Gaspra (enhanced colorization)|thumb|right|alt=Potato-shaped asteroid Two months after entering the asteroid belt, Galileo performed the first asteroid encounter by a spacecraft. Galileo passed 951 Gaspra, an S-type asteroid, at a distance of at 22:37 UTC on October 29, 1991, at a relative speed of about . Fifty-seven images of Gaspra were taken with the SSI, covering about 80 percent of the asteroid. Without the HGA, the bit rate was only about 40 bit/s, so an image took up to 60 hours to transmit back to Earth. The Galileo project was able to secure 80 hours of Canberra's 70-meter dish time between 7 and 14 November 1991, but most of images taken, including low-resolution images of more of the surface, were not transmitted to Earth until November 1992.
Asteroid encounters 951 Gaspra 951 Gaspra (enhanced colorization)|thumb|right|alt=Potato-shaped asteroid Two months after entering the asteroid belt Galileo performed the first asteroid encounter by a spacecraft. Galileo passed 951 Gaspra, an S-type asteroid, at a distance of at 22:37 UTC on October 29 1991, at a relative speed of about . Fifty-seven images of Gaspra were taken with the SSI, covering about 80 percent of the asteroid. Without the HGA, the bit rate was only about 40 bit/s, so an image took up to 60 hours to transmit back to Earth. The Galileo project was able to secure 80 hours of Canberra's 70-meter dish time between 7 and 14 Nov,ember 1991, but most of images taken, including low-resolution images of more of the surface, were not transmitted to Earth until November 1992.