binary asteroid
Sign in to savesystem of two asteroids orbiting their common center of mass
~3 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Binary asteroid 243 Ida with its small minor-planet moon, Dactyl, as seen by Galileo Binary near-Earth asteroid 65803 Didymos and its moon Dimorphos imaged by the Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft
A binary asteroid is a system of two asteroids orbiting their common barycenter. The binary nature of 243 Ida was discovered when the Galileo spacecraft flew by the asteroid in 1993. Since then numerous binary asteroids and several triple asteroids have been detected.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “binary asteroid” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.