seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager , one of the most detailed images returned by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft during its flyby of the asteroid binary.When NASA’s Lucy spacecraft conducted a flyby of a small asteroid this week, it got more than engineers bargained for when a second asteroid—a moonlet—popped into view.
However, in an image sent back by Lucy over NASA’s Deep Space Network, it’s evident that Dinkinesh is a binary asteroid. NASA estimates that the main asteroid is about 0.5 miles at its widest, while the smaller is about 0.15 miles in size. “We knew this was going to be the smallest main belt asteroid ever seen up close,” said Keith Noll, Lucy project scientist from NASA’s Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The fact that it is two makes it even more exciting.”Below Our Feet May Be Alien Blobs From An Ancient Crash Scientists SayLucy’s primary mission is to study Trojan asteroids, the ancient remnants of the early solar system clustered in two “swarms” leading and following Jupiter in its path around the sun.