"NASA's First Asteroid Photo Unveils Unexpected Discovery"

NASA's Lucy spacecraft, on its mission to explore Jupiter's Trojan asteroids, captured its first-ever asteroid encounter, revealing a surprise. The spacecraft's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (L'LORRI) returned an image of what was initially thought to be a single asteroid, but further analysis showed that it was actually a contact binary, consisting of two smaller objects touching each other. This is the first time a contact binary has been observed orbiting another asteroid. The larger asteroid, Dinkinesh, is about half a mile wide, while its small satellite is about 0.15 miles in size. The discovery adds to the excitement of the Lucy mission, which aims to study the Trojan asteroids and prepare for future encounters.