2023-11-02 12:15:40
Illustration of Lucy flying over an asteroid on her mission – NASA
MADRID, 2 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The operations team has confirmed that NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has called home after its encounter with a small main belt asteroid, Dinkinesh.
Based on the information received, the team determined that the spacecraft is in good condition and ordered it to begin transmitting the images and other data collected during the encounter, NASA reported. It will take up to a week for all the data collected during the encounter to be transmitted to Earth. The team looks forward to seeing how the spacecraft performed during this first in-flight test of a high-speed asteroid encounter.
Lucy’s closest approach occurred at 16:54 UTC at a distance of 430 kilometers from Dinkinesh. The ship was moving at 16,000 kilometers per hour.
152830 Dinkinesh is a small rocky asteroid in the main belt of about 760 meters in diameter. It was discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research study in Socorro, New Mexico, on November 4, 1999.
Lucy, which left Earth in October 2021, is aiming for a 12-year mission to explore seven different asteroids: Dinkinesh and six Trojan asteroids in the vicinity of Jupiter.
By studying these asteroids up close, scientists hope to refine their theories about how the planets in our solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago and why they ended up in their current configuration.
The mission takes its name from the fossilized human ancestor (named “Lucy” by her discoverers) whose skeleton provided a unique insight into the evolution of humanity.
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