Dinkinesh Moonrise
Explanation:
Last Wednesday the
voyaging Lucy spacecraft
encountered
its first asteroid,
152830
Dinkinesh, and discovered the inner-main belt asteroid has a moon.
From a distance of just over 400 kilometers, Lucy's Long-Range
Reconnaissance Imager
captured
this close-up
of the binary system during
a flyby at 4.5 kilometer per second or around 10,000 miles per hour.
A
marvelous world, Dinkinesh
itself is small, less than 800 meters (about 0.5 miles) across at its widest.
Its satellite is seen from the spacecraft's perspective
to emerge from behind the primary asteroid.
The asteroid moon is estimated to be only about 220 meters wide.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
