On Nov. 1, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft zoomed past this space rock, marking the first of several asteroid encounters the probe is designed to make.
Lucy’s goal is to ultimately explore a set of asteroids near Jupiter, known as the Trojans, which are thought to hold clues about the earliest days of our solar system; these objects may be able to shed light on the origins of life on Earth.
But, on the way to those Trojans, Lucy has a couple of stops — including Dinkinesh, which sits in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Lucy spotted the third rock in this asteroid system six minutes after snapping the images that initially revealed Dinkinesh wasn’t alone.
After leaving Dinky, the probe will head back to Earth for a gravity assist maneuver in December 2024.
“It’s truly marvelous when nature surprises us with a new puzzle,” Tom Statler, Lucy program scientist from NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in the statement.
The original article contains 566 words, the summary contains 160 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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On Nov. 1, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft zoomed past this space rock, marking the first of several asteroid encounters the probe is designed to make.
Lucy’s goal is to ultimately explore a set of asteroids near Jupiter, known as the Trojans, which are thought to hold clues about the earliest days of our solar system; these objects may be able to shed light on the origins of life on Earth.
But, on the way to those Trojans, Lucy has a couple of stops — including Dinkinesh, which sits in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Lucy spotted the third rock in this asteroid system six minutes after snapping the images that initially revealed Dinkinesh wasn’t alone.
After leaving Dinky, the probe will head back to Earth for a gravity assist maneuver in December 2024.
“It’s truly marvelous when nature surprises us with a new puzzle,” Tom Statler, Lucy program scientist from NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in the statement.
The original article contains 566 words, the summary contains 160 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!