307 Nike is a sizeable Main belt

Asteroid belt

The asteroid belt is the region of the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets...

 asteroid

Asteroid

Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...

. It was discovered by Auguste Charlois

Auguste Charlois

Auguste Honoré Charlois was a French astronomer who discovered 99 asteroids while working in Nice.His first discovery was the asteroid 267 Tirza in 1887...

 on March 5, 1891 in Nice

Nice

Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...

. Charlois named it after the Greek goddess of victory, as well as the Greek name for the city where it was discovered. Measurement of the light curve of this asteroid in 2000 indicates a rotation period of 7.902 ± 0.005 hours.

On December 2, 1972, Pioneer 10

Pioneer 10

Pioneer 10 is a 258-kilogram robotic space probe that completed the first interplanetary mission to Jupiter, and became the first spacecraft to achieve escape velocity from the Solar System. The project was managed by the NASA Ames Research Center and the contract for the construction of the...

 made one of its nearest passages of an asteroid when it passed 307 Nike at a distance of about during the spacecraft's pioneering trip through the asteroid belt

Asteroid belt

The asteroid belt is the region of the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets...

.