NASA’s Lucy Asteroid Mission Zips Past a ‘Dinky’ Space Rock

On November 1 a NASA spacecraft called Lucy will introduce humans to a world called Dinkinesh—nicknamed Dinky—the smallest main-belt asteroid we’ve ever seen up close.

Lucy is moving so quickly that the mission’s primary science observations total just 24 hours spread across the spacecraft’s 12-year trek around the solar system, Levison says. The mission is only flying past its targets, not making extended stays—and once the probe has left an asteroid, that’s it. “There’s no going back; there’s no do-overs,” he says.

So for Lucy, Dinkinesh is first and foremost an engineering test and a practice run. But planetary scientists—who never turn down an opportunity to see something new in the solar system—are excited for their glimpse of the little space rock. Thanks to those efforts, scientists now have a somewhat better picture of Dinkinesh, which is shaping up to be an intriguing little space rock: rich in silica, roughly oblong and sedately spinning, with an estimated diameter of circa 900 meters and a day about twice the length of Earth’s 24-hour diurnal period.

Comparing Dinkinesh and Didymos should be particularly interesting, Sunshine says, because the two asteroids are made of the same type of material type and are similar sizes, just in different locations. “It’s rare that we get to have that sort of direct comparison in our line of science, so I was very excited when this became an obvious flyby target for Lucy,” she says.

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