Paula Cleggett-Haleim
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.                                    
November 14, 1991
(Phone:  202/453-1547)

Jim Wilson
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 
(Phone:  818/354-5011)


RELEASE:  91-189

First Photograph Of An Asteroid ReleaseD By NASA 


   Scientists from the Galileo project today released the 
world's first close-up image of an asteroid, taken Oct. 29 by 
the Galileo spacecraft some 34 minutes before it flew past the 
asteroid Gaspra at a distance of 1,000 miles.  At that time 
the spacecraft and the asteroid were about 205 million miles 
from the sun and 255 million miles from Earth. 

   The picture was taken through a green filter by the Galileo 
spacecraft's imaging system at a range of about 10,000 miles 
from Gaspra.  The picture is one of about a dozen Galileo took 
of the asteroid. 

   The Galileo team expects to have the spacecraft transmit to 
Earth next year all of the spacecraft's Gaspra observations.  
That transmission also would include one picture taken at even 
closer range, a group of pictures to be combined with this 
green-filter image to make a color picture and other images 
and scientific data. 

   The Galileo project, whose primary mission is to explore 
the Jupiter system in 1995-97, is managed for NASA's Office of 
Space Science and Applications by the Jet Propulsion 
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 

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