Who found her? It was NASA’s Lucy spacecraft. He recently had an encounter with an asteroid, 480 million kilometers from Earth. This is how the discovery of a minimoon occurred. The missions of the American Space Agency continue to discover new celestial bodies. This time, it was the turn of a mini-moon of only 220 meters. The space object is part of a binary system with an asteroid.
Dinkinesh
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft visited the asteroid Dinkinesh this week. This is almost half a million kilometers away from Earth. That’s how she discovered that this huge space rock has a little companion: a minimoon. The asteroid Dinkinesh turned out to be a binary system. And in this, the largest body measures approximately 790 meters at its widest point. Meanwhile, the smallest measures 220 meters.
The discovery of a minimoon is one of a kind. “We knew this was going to be the smallest main belt asteroid ever seen up close.” This is stated by Keith Noll, Lucy project scientist. He is with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The fact that there are two of them makes it even more exciting,” he added in a report recently released by NASA.
Binary
NASA explains the progress of the mission in the weeks prior to the spacecraft’s encounter with Dinkinesh. Lucy’s team had already wondered whether Dinkinesh could be a binary system. This was because Lucy’s instruments observed that the asteroid’s brightness changed over time.
The first images of the meeting cleared up all doubts. Dinkinesh is a close binary system. With these photographs they were also able to estimate the measurements of the two bodies that make up the system. Scientists on the team are carefully studying the data. They hope to better understand the nature of small asteroids.
