Dinkinesh, a small asteroid that NASA\u2019s Lucy mission visited last week, continues to surprise. <\/p>\n
Lucy swung by the space rock, located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, on November 1 as part of a test of the spacecraft\u2019s equipment before tackling the mission\u2019s primary goal: surveying the swarms of Trojan asteroids around Jupiter. The flyby of Dinkinesh, which means \u201cmarvelous\u201d in the Amharic language of Ethiopia, wasn\u2019t even added to Lucy\u2019s itinerary until January. <\/p>\n
But the first views captured by Lucy\u2019s instruments showed there was more to the shadowy asteroid than expected. At first, images suggested that the space rock was part of a binary pair, with a smaller asteroid orbiting Dinkinesh. <\/p>\n
However, additional images taken by the spacecraft just after the flyby\u2019s closest approach have now revealed that the smaller asteroid is actually a contact binary \u2014 two smaller space rocks that touch each other. <\/p>\n
Lucy came within 265 miles (about 425 kilometers) of the asteroid\u2019s surface during its closest approach, which is when the first images were taken. The second batch of images revealing the contact binary, shared by NASA on Tuesday, were taken six minutes later from 1,010 miles (about 1,630 kilometers) away. <\/p>\n
\u201cContact binaries seem to be fairly common in the solar system,\u201d said John Spencer, Lucy deputy project scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, in a statement. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t seen many up-close, and we\u2019ve never seen one orbiting another asteroid.
We\u2019d been puzzling over odd variations in Dinkinesh\u2019s brightness that we saw on approach, which gave us a hint that Dinkinesh might have a moon of some sort, but we never suspected anything so bizarre!\u201d <\/p>\n
The close approach was primarily designed to help the Lucy spacecraft test its terminal tracking system, which allows the spacecraft to locate the space rock autonomously and keep it within view while flying by at 10,000 miles per hour (4.5 kilometers per second). The system surpassed expectations, which allowed astronomers to make the discovery of Dinkinesh\u2019s unexpected companion. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is puzzling, to say the least,\u201d said Hal Levison, principal investigator for Lucy at the Southwest Research Institute, in a statement. \u201cI would have never expected a system that looks like this. In particular, I don\u2019t understand why the two components of the satellite have similar sizes. This is going to be fun for the scientific community to figure out.\u201d <\/p>\n
Data from the flyby is still transmitting from the spacecraft to the mission team. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s truly marvelous when nature surprises us with a new puzzle,\u201d said Tom Statler, Lucy program scientist at NASA, in a statement. \u201cGreat science pushes us to ask questions that we never knew we needed to ask.\u201d <\/p>\n
Lucy\u2019s next close encounter will be with another main belt asteroid called Donaldjohanson in 2025. And then, the spacecraft will set off to see the Trojans. <\/p>\n
The Trojan asteroids, which borrow their name from Greek mythology, orbit the sun in two swarms \u2014 one that\u2019s ahead of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, and a second one that lags behind it. Too distant to be seen in detail with telescopes, the asteroids will get their close-up when Lucy reaches the Trojans in 2027. <\/p>\n
The mission borrows its name from the Lucy fossil, the remains of an ancient human ancestor discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. The skeleton has helped researchers piece together aspects of human evolution, and NASA Lucy team members hope their mission will achieve a similar feat regarding the history of our solar system. <\/p>\n
The asteroids are like fossils themselves, representing the leftover material hanging around after the formation of giant planets in our solar system, including Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. <\/p>\n\n
Dinkinesh, a small asteroid that NASA\u2019s Lucy mission visited last week, continues to surprise. Lucy swung by the space rock, located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, on November 1 as part of a test of the spacecraft\u2019s equipment before tackling the mission\u2019s primary goal: surveying the swarms of Trojan asteroids around <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11360,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}