Curiosities of asteroid IDA

1995/08/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Astronomia

The information sent by the Galileo probe is becoming more fruitful than expected. Researchers at Cornell University in New York, for example, have based the data provided by Galileo to complete what we so far knew about asteroid Ida. Thanks to this study, for example, we have been able to know that around Ida operates a satellite of 1.6 kilometers in diameter.

According to New York researchers, the Dactyl satellite is of the same origin as the Koronis asteroid belt. To explain why asteroid Ida has attracted and rotated around it, researchers hypothesize using the brutal explosion that occurred in the Koronis asteroid belt.