Experimental Craft Links Wayfaring Asteroid to Distant Parent Body Fri. Calif. The finding is notable because Braille and Vesta are in completely different orbits, and previously seemed to have no connection to one another.
Braille is in an eccentric orbit that passes inside the orbit of Mars.
Its own unique chemical composition is shared by about 6 percent of the meteorites found on Earth, leading scientists to conclude that the two asteroids and the meteorites share a common origin. It is often said a picture is worth a thousand words, well in this case, a spectrum is worth a thousand pictures. The spacecraft didn't get any good pictures of Braille. In fact, it almost completely missed the tiny, tumbling rock, because it had trouble finding it. So small is Braille, that the spacecraft's cameras couldn't even detect it until two days before closest approach.