Wait for me, Dinky!
Wait for me, Dinky! https://asteroidday-uploads.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/25210419/Wait-for-me-Dinky-.gif 512 256 Asteroid Day https://asteroidday-uploads.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/25210419/Wait-for-me-Dinky-.gif
Image of asteroid Dinkinesh captured by Lucy’s high-resolution camera, the L’LORRI instrument. The brightest star in the field of view is HD 34258, a 7.6 magnitude star in the constellation Auriga that is too faint to be seen with the naked eye from Earth. (NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL)
Lucy spacecraft sent the first images of Dinkinesh to Earth, the first and smallest of the asteroids that will be explored during the 12 years scheduled for the mission.
Just a kilometre wide, this asteroid is not one of the Trojans. It is located in the inner part of the Main Belt, a region of the Solar System full of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter.
This image was captured between September 2nd and 5th by one of the probe’s high-resolution cameras, from a distance of 23 million km.
Launched in 2021, the Lucy spacecraft aims to visit Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, a cloud of rocky debris gravitationally bound to the giant planet. These fragments are considered remnants of the solar system’s infancy, more than four billion years ago.
Dinkinesh was added to Lucy’s targets as a risk mitigation exercise to test the effectiveness of its tracking system. More specifically, whether it could keep the asteroid in its field of view while travelling at speeds approaching 4.5 kilometres per second.
In the following weeks, an optical navigation program aboard the Lucy probe will track Dinkinesh’s position for a precise flyby, which is finally expected to take place on November 1, when the spacecraft will be just 425 km away.
See also:
LEARN – What are Trojan asteroids?
