NASA's Lucy probe just completed its first flyby of the asteroid Dinkinesh, discovering it is actually a binary pair.
’s Lucy probe has completed one of its first flybys, skimming past the asteroid Dinkinesh on its way to other targets. While the flyby was expected to give us a photo of the asteroid, it also revealed a smaller, satellite asteroid that is orbiting the larger Lucy target, revealing that it’s actually a binary pair, not a single asteroid. Dinkinesh is one of several main belt asteroids that
and other agencies are working to study more in-depth going forward. While Lucy isn’t spending a ton of time looking at Dinkinesh, astronomers were astounded to learn that the asteroid has a friend, confirming some data that Lucy had been capturing on its approach. Leading up to Lucy’s Dinkinesh flyby, astronomers on the Lucy team were curious if the asteroid might be part of a binary system.
’s probe will fly past seven asteroids. However, Dinkinesh was added to that list alongside two Trojan moons. Now that Dinkinesh’s binary satellite has been discovered, Lucy will fly by a total of eleven cosmic objects. Dinkinesh is estimated to measure 0.5 miles at its widest point, while they estimate the smaller yet unnamed satellite to be around 0.15 miles in size.
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