00:00Gaia's mission is a complicated one.
00:06It's attempting to chart every star in our galaxy, which could number upwards of 400
00:11billion.
00:12However, more recently, it turned its instruments inward, looking for asteroids, and boy did
00:16it find some.
00:18It's now being reported that the Gaia mission has identified some 352 additional asteroids
00:23whipping around our solar system.
00:25But these asteroids weren't just simple rocks that were previously undetected.
00:29According to their recently released findings, these are asteroid moons, meaning they are
00:33asteroids circling other asteroids, making them binary pairs.
00:37That means that the 352 newly minted asteroid moons nearly doubles the number of previously
00:42discovered pairs.
00:44The researchers say that binary pairs are hard to spot, as they're not only small but
00:48also far away.
00:49Experts predict that one-sixth of all asteroids should have a pair, but so far they've only
00:54been able to identify a few hundred of them amongst the million known.
00:57And the researchers adding that this most recent find shows that there are many more
01:01asteroid moons out there just waiting to be found.
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