The Lucy mission has shared additional images from its flyby of the asteroid Dinkinesh, revealing the surprising companion orbiting the space rock isn’t what it initially seemed.
The flyby of Dinkinesh, which means “marvelous” in the Amharic language of Ethiopia, wasn’t even added to Lucy’s itinerary until January.
At first, images suggested that the space rock was part of a binary pair, with a smaller asteroid orbiting Dinkinesh.
“Contact binaries seem to be fairly common in the solar system,” said John Spencer, Lucy deputy project scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, in a statement.
The Trojan asteroids, which borrow their name from Greek mythology, orbit the sun in two swarms — one that’s ahead of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, and a second one that lags behind it.
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.
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.
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The flyby of Dinkinesh, which means “marvelous” in the Amharic language of Ethiopia, wasn’t even added to Lucy’s itinerary until January.
At first, images suggested that the space rock was part of a binary pair, with a smaller asteroid orbiting Dinkinesh.
“Contact binaries seem to be fairly common in the solar system,” said John Spencer, Lucy deputy project scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, in a statement.
The Trojan asteroids, which borrow their name from Greek mythology, orbit the sun in two swarms — one that’s ahead of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, and a second one that lags behind it.
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.
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.
The original article contains 626 words, the summary contains 163 words. Saved 74%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!