NASA's Lucy spacecraft flew past its first asteroid, Dinkinesh, on 1 November, and the first images have shown that Dinkinesh has a second, even tinier, asteroid orbiting it
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has flown past its first asteroid, and found a second one at the same time. Lucy flew paston 1 November, and the images it has sent back to Earth have revealed that Dinkinesh has an even smaller space rock orbiting it – the smallest main belt asteroid ever observed up close.
This finding wasn’t entirely a surprise. As Lucy approached Dinkinesh over the past few weeks, the asteroid’s brightness seemed to oscillate over time, which is often an indication of the presence of some sort of satellite. Dinkinesh is only about 790 metres across, though, so it was impossible to spot its satellite from Earth and even the spacecraft was still too far away until 1 November to tell for sure.
During the 1 November flyby, Lucy flew just 430 kilometres away from Dinkinesh at a speed of about 16,000 kilometres per hour, snapping pictures as it went by. The pictures revealed a second small asteroid. “The fact that it is two makes it even more exciting. In some ways these asteroids look similar to the near-Earth asteroid
binary Didymos and Dimorphos that saw, but there are some really interesting differences that we will be investigating.”The main goal of the flyby was to test Lucy’s scientific instruments, in particular the system that keeps it pointed at its target as it hurtles by, and the fact that these first images show anything at all demonstrates that the tracking system is working properly.
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