NASA's Lucy Mission Discovers Second Asteroid and Moon During Dinkinesh Flyby
NASA's Lucy spacecraft, on its mission to explore the Trojan asteroids associated with Jupiter, made a surprising discovery during its flyby of the asteroid Dinkinesh. The spacecraft's cameras revealed another small asteroid orbiting Dinkinesh, making it a binary asteroid system. This unexpected finding brings the total number of asteroids Lucy will fly by to 11, exceeding the original plan of seven. The images captured during the flyby provide detailed views of the asteroid pair, and further analysis of the data will be conducted to investigate the similarities and differences with other binary asteroid systems.