NASA’s Lucy mission recently made a surprising discovery during its visit to the asteroid Dinkinesh. This small asteroid, located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, was found to have a contact binary companion. A contact binary is when two space rocks are touching one another.
The Lucy spacecraft, on a mission to survey the swarms of Trojan asteroids around Jupiter, made a close flyby of Dinkinesh on November 1st as part of a test of its equipment. The flyby was not originally part of the mission’s itinerary, but the spacecraft’s instruments revealed that Dinkinesh was part of a binary pair.
Further images captured by the spacecraft during its closest approach showed that the smaller asteroid orbiting Dinkinesh was actually a contact binary. The two smaller space rocks were touching each other, a rare and unexpected find in the solar system.
The mission’s deputy project scientist, John Spencer, expressed surprise at the discovery, stating, “Contact binaries seem to be fairly common in the solar system, but we haven’t seen many up-close, and we’ve never seen one orbiting another asteroid.”
The close approach was primarily designed to test the spacecraft’s tracking system, but the unexpected discovery of Dinkinesh’s companion has captured the attention of the scientific community. Hal Levison, principal investigator for Lucy, remarked, “I would have never expected a system that looks like this. This is going to be fun for the scientific community to figure out.”
Data from the flyby is still being transmitted from the spacecraft to the mission team, and Lucy’s next close encounter will be with another main belt asteroid called Donaldjohanson in 2025. The spacecraft will then set off to survey the Trojan asteroids in 2027.
The discovery of the contact binary companion on Dinkinesh has added to the mystery of this small asteroid, and researchers are looking forward to uncovering more surprises as the Lucy mission continues to explore our solar system’s history.