Gaia spots possible moons around hundreds of asteroids

ESA’s star-surveying Gaia mission has again proven to be a formidable asteroid explorer, spotting potential moons around more than 350 asteroids not known to have a companion.

Previously, Gaia had explored asteroids known to have moons — so-called ‘binary asteroids’ — and confirmed that the telescope was able to spot these tiny moons. But this new finding proves that the mission can conduct ‘blind’ searches to discover completely new candidates, too.

If confirmed, this new finding adds 352 more binary candidates to the tally, nearly doubling the known number of asteroids with moons.

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