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Recently, a small asteroid named Dinkinesh, visited by NASA’s Lucy mission, has defied expectations. Although the spacecraft’s flyby wasn’t planned until January, Lucy’s instruments captured a surprising revelation about Dinkinesh upon its arrival.
Initial images suggested that the space rock was part of a binary pair, with a smaller asteroid orbiting Dinkinesh. However, further images have revealed that the smaller asteroid is actually a contact binary – two smaller space rocks that touch each other.
Chief scientist, John Spencer, expressed his amazement: “We’ve never seen one orbiting another asteroid. We’d been puzzling over odd variations in Dinkinesh’s 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!”
The flyby also helped the spacecraft test its terminal tracking system, which allows it to locate and view space rocks while flying by at high speeds. The unexpected discovery of Dinkinesh’s companion has baffled scientists, leaving them with a new puzzle to solve.
Ultimately, the Lucy spacecraft aims to unravel the mysteries of the Trojan asteroids after its next close encounter with another main belt asteroid in 2025. These asteroids, named after characters in Greek mythology, orbit the sun in swarms and hold essential information about the formation of our solar system.
Borrowing its name from a famous fossil, Lucy’s mission is to provide insights into the history of our solar system, much like the ancient human ancestor after which it is named has provided clues about human evolution.
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