"NASA's Lucy Spacecraft Makes Surprising Discoveries During Asteroid Flybys"

NASA's Lucy spacecraft, on its way to explore Jupiter Trojan asteroids, made an unexpected discovery during its flyby of the small main belt asteroid Dinkinesh. The first images returned by Lucy revealed that Dinkinesh is actually a binary pair, consisting of a larger body approximately 0.5 miles wide and a smaller body about 0.15 miles in size. This encounter served as an engineering test for the spacecraft's tracking system, which successfully autonomously tracked the asteroid as it flew past at 10,000 mph. The data collected will provide valuable insights into the nature of small asteroids.