00:02This is asteroid Dinkanesh. It resides in the main asteroid belt that orbits between Mars and Jupiter.
00:08And recently NASA's asteroid probe Lucy did its first flyby of the cosmic traveler and discovered something unexpected.
00:15This is what is being described as Dinkanesh's moonlit, another small asteroid that's orbiting it.
00:20Astronomers say this was a pretty big surprise, as asteroids don't often come in pairs like this, at least not
00:26as far as we know.
00:26And it's now opening the floor to speculation that perhaps they're not as rare as we thought.
00:31As Lucy approached the binary pair, researchers actually began to believe something was going on, as its brightness kept changing
00:37during observations.
00:38That's often a sign that something is passing in front of the observed object.
00:41And when the Lucy probe sped by at 10,000 miles per hour, that very theory was confirmed.
00:46Experts say the larger asteroid is some 2,600 feet wide.
00:50Meanwhile, the moonlit is only around 720 feet wide.
00:54The researchers say there are some interesting similarities between this pair and the Didymus dimorphous pair NASA's asteroid DART mission
01:00slammed into and redirected last year.
01:03Meanwhile, the Lucy probe is already moving on to the next one, asteroid Donald Johnson, and will hopefully be sending
01:08us photos of that one come 2025.
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