NASA’s Lucy Probe Discovers a Second Asteroid Where They Only Expected One

Amaze Lab

Asteroid Dinkinesh resides in the main asteroid belt that orbits between Mars and Jupiter. Recently, NASA’s asteroid probe Lucy did its first flyby of the cosmic traveler and discovered something unexpected.

Transcript

00:00 This is asteroid Dinkanesh.

00:04 It resides in the main asteroid belt that orbits between Mars and Jupiter.

00:08 And recently, NASA's asteroid probe Lucy did its first flyby of the cosmic traveler

00:12 and discovered something unexpected.

00:15 This is what is being described as Dinkanesh's moonlet, another small asteroid that's orbiting

00:20 it.

00:21 Astronomers say this was a pretty big surprise, as asteroids don't often come in pairs like

00:25 this, at least not as far as we know.

00:26 And it's now opening the floor to speculation that perhaps they're not as rare as we thought.

00:30 As Lucy approached the binary pair, researchers actually began to believe something was going

00:35 on, as its brightness kept changing during observations.

00:38 That's often a sign that something is passing in front of the observed object.

00:41 And when the Lucy probe sped by at 10,000 miles per hour, that very theory was confirmed.

00:47 Experts say the larger asteroid is some 2,600 feet wide.

00:50 Meanwhile, the moonlet is only around 720 feet wide.

00:54 The researchers say there are some interesting similarities between this pair and the Didymus

00:57 Dimorphis pair NASA's asteroid DART mission slammed into and redirected last year.

01:02 Meanwhile, the Lucy probe is already moving on to the next one, asteroid Donald Johnson,

01:07 and will hopefully be sending us photos of that one come 2025.

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