Astronomers Discover First Quadruple Asteroid

130 Elektra is a potato-shaped rock about 160 miles along the long axis, and now it has been seen to have three moons, all a mile or more across, orbiting it. I’m not sure if that’s terribly useful from a scientific or industrial point of view… but long-term, it’d probably make the asteroid a neat place to live. A spherical transparent bubble around the asteroid, just very slightly smaller in diameter than the length of the asteroid, should hold in an atmosphere; where the asteroid intersects the sphere can be the polar airlocks for ships, cargo and people. The surface gravity would be a meager 0.001 G’s or so; probably enough to hold stuff more or less down on the surface, but certainly low enough to permit easy manual flapping-winged flight. The moons could be simply “art” in the sky, but they might serve a practical purpose: since the asteroid orbits between 2.5 and 3.8 AU from the sun, it would be cold and the moons, fitted with fusion reactors, could serve as small artificial suns to light and warm the place. The asteroid rotates once about every 5 hours; this could be slowed to a 24 hour day if needed, although if it has multiple mini-suns orbiting it, the length of the day would be pretty weird no matter what.