November 1’also NASA”s Lucy spacecraft passed not only its first asteroid, but also its first two. First images provided by Lucy show small main belt asteroid Dinkinesh’It shows that is actually a binary pair.

“Dinkinesh has truly lived up to his name; this is amazing,” said Hal Levison, Dinkinesh’Referring to the Amharic meaning of “wonderful”. Levison, San Antonio’Lucy, the Southwest Research Institute based in Boulder, Colorado’He is the principal investigator of . “When Lucy was first chosen for the flight, we planned to fly past seven asteroids. dinkinesh’With the addition of s, two Trojan satellites, and now this satellite, we bring the number to 11.’We went out.”

Dinkinesh of the spacecraft’In the weeks before her encounter with Lucy”s team, Lucy’Dinkinesh’s instruments see how the asteroid’s brightness changes over time.’He wondered if it was a binary system. The first photographs of the collision eliminated all doubts. Dinkinesh is a close binary code. Based on preliminary analysis of the first available images, the team estimates that the largest object was about 0.5 miles (790 m) across at its widest point, while the smaller was about 0.15 miles (220 m) across.

The rendezvous was primarily a flight test of the spacecraft, and specifically Lucy’It focused on testing a system called the Terminal Tracking System, which would allow the U.S. to autonomously track an asteroid flying at 10,000 miles per hour.

“This is a stunning series of photographs. “They show that terminal tracking works as intended, even when the universe presents us with a more difficult target than we expected,” Littleton said.’Lockheed Martin in’Guidance and navigation engineer Tom Kennedy. Colorado. “It’s one thing to model, test and practice. It’s a whole other thing to see how it actually happens.”

Although this encounter was conducted as an engineering test, scientific teams are excited to examine the data to understand the nature of small asteroids.

NASA’of Greenbelt, Maryland’Goddard Space Flight Center in’Lucy in’“We knew this would be the smallest main belt asteroid ever seen up close,” said Keith Knoll, the s project scientist. “Having two makes it even more exciting. In some ways, these asteroids are DART’The world seen by’or nearby binary asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos'”It’s similar, but there are some really interesting differences that we’ll investigate.”

It will take about a week for the team to connect the rest of the encounter data from the spacecraft. The team used the data to evaluate the spacecraft’s behavior during impact and to test the asteroid’s main belt asteroid Donald Johansson in 2025.’will use it to prepare for the next close-up view of the. Then Lucy will be well prepared to meet the main objectives of the mission. , Jupiter’in Trojan asteroids, 2027’Since the. Source