NASA’s Lucy mission has made an astonishing discovery during its study of Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids. The mission recently flew close to Asteroid Dinkinesh and captured images that revealed a surprising secret about this asteroid. It turns out that Dinkinesh is not just one asteroid, but a binary pair floating in Jupiter’s orbit.
According to a report published by NASA, scientists had previously speculated that Dinkinesh was a binary pair, and the images taken by the Lucy spacecraft instruments have now confirmed this. The preliminary analysis of the images suggests that the estimated sizes of the two objects in this binary pair are approximately 790 meters and 220 meters. Hal Levison, the principal investigator for the Lucy mission, stated that the name Dinkinesh, which means “marvelous,” perfectly matches this extraordinary discovery. He also mentioned that the mission was originally planned to fly by seven asteroids, but with the addition of Dinkinesh and two Trojan moons, they have now increased their target to eleven.
This discovery of a binary pair during an in-flight engineering test has excited the researchers even more. Such binary pairs, known as “Trojan swarms” in scientific terms, are remnants that orbit around the Sun and Jupiter. After studying the Dinkinesh asteroid, NASA’s Lucy mission will continue to explore nine more of these celestial objects to gain a deeper understanding of them.
The Lucy spacecraft was launched on October 16, 2021, by NASA. Its mission is to explore a record-breaking number of asteroids, including Trojan asteroids that share an orbit with Jupiter around the Sun. In addition to studying Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, the mission will also fly by two asteroids in the main asteroid belt of the solar system. This 12-year mission aims to provide scientists with valuable insights into the nature of asteroids. The mission was named after a skeleton discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, which provided significant information about human evolution.
With this groundbreaking discovery and the promise of more fascinating findings to come, NASA’s Lucy mission is poised to make significant contributions to our understanding of asteroids and the solar system as a whole.
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