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🛰️ NASA’s Lucy mission went to visit an asteroid and got more than it bargained for

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This image shows the “moonrise” of the newly discovered second asteroid behind Dinkinesh, captured by Lucy's Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager.

This image shows the “moonrise” of the newly discovered second asteroid behind Dinkinesh, captured by Lucy's Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager.


When NASA’s Lucy mission flew by its first asteroid this week, its cameras captured a surprise.

The Lucy spacecraft zoomed by the small asteroid Dinkinesh, located in our solar system’s main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. But what astronomers thought was one asteroid is really a binary pair of space rocks.

Hal Levison, principal investigator for Lucy at the Southwest Research Institute, said Dinkinesh, which means “marvelous” in the Amharic language of Ethiopia, “really did live up to its name.”



“This is marvelous,” Levison said in a statement. “When Lucy was originally selected for flight, we planned to fly by seven asteroids. With the addition of Dinkinesh, two Trojan moons, and now this satellite, we’ve turned it up to 11.”

Astronomers had their first hints that Dinkinesh might be a duo when Lucy’s instrument suite detected changes in brightness in the weeks leading up to the spacecraft’s close approach on Wednesday.

What the Dinkinesh duo could reveal​

The Lucy team believes the larger asteroid is a half-mile (805 meters) wide and the smaller space rock is 0.15 miles (220 meters) across.

Lucy came within 265 miles (425 kilometers) of the asteroid’s surface during its closest approach Wednesday afternoon.

The close approach was designed to help the Lucy spacecraft test its suite of equipment, including its terminal tracking system, which allows the spacecraft to locate the space rock autonomously and keep it within view while flying by at 10,000 miles per hour (4.5 kilometers per second).

“This is an awesome series of images. They indicate that the terminal tracking system worked as intended, even when the universe presented us with a more difficult target than we expected,” said Tom Kennedy, guidance and navigation engineer at Lockheed Martin, in a statement. (Lockheed Martin is a NASA partner on the Lucy mission.)

“It’s one thing to simulate, test, and practice,” Kennedy added. “It’s another thing entirely to see it actually happen.”

The data collected during the flyby will also offer insight into small asteroids, providing a comparison with others that previous NASA missions have observed.

“We knew this was going to be the smallest main belt asteroid ever seen up close,” said Keith Noll, Lucy project scientist from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement. “The fact that it is two makes it even more exciting. In some ways these asteroids look similar to the near-Earth asteroid binary Didymos and Dimorphos that DART saw, but there are some really interesting differences that we will be investigating.”

In September 2022, NASA’s DART mission intentionally slammed into Dimorphos, a small moon orbiting the near-Earth asteroid Didymos, to demonstrate the technology needed to alter the trajectory of a space rock.

Preparing for future flybys​

The data collected during the Lucy mission flyby will continue to return to Earth over the next week. This information will help the mission team prepare for the spacecraft’s future asteroid flybys, including a close encounter with another main belt asteroid called Donaldjohanson in 2025.

Lucy’s main goal is to explore Jupiter’s Trojan asteroid swarms, which have never been explored. The Trojan asteroids, which borrow their name from Greek mythology, orbit the sun in two swarms — one that’s ahead of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, and a second one that lags behind it.

So far, scientists’ main glimpses of the Trojans have largely been artist renderings or animations because the space rocks are too distant to be seen in detail with telescopes. Lucy will provide the first high-resolution images of what these asteroids look like.

Lucy is scheduled to reach the Trojan asteroids in 2027. Each of the asteroids Lucy is set to fly by differ in size and color.

The mission borrows its name from the Lucy fossil, the remains of an ancient human ancestor discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. The skeleton has helped researchers piece together aspects of human evolution, and NASA Lucy team members hope their mission will achieve a similar feat regarding the history of our solar system.

There are about 7,000 Trojan asteroids, and the largest is 160 miles (257 kilometers) across. The asteroids are like fossils themselves, representing the leftover material hanging around after the formation of giant planets in our solar system, including Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The mission will help researchers peer back in time to learn how the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago and unlock how planets ended up in their current spots.


 
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Hope these expeditions aren't part of their weapons program to use asteroids as projectiles against targets on earth. Can't put it past these sick Nazis.
 
Hope these expeditions aren't part of their weapons program to use asteroids as projectiles against targets on earth. Can't put it past these sick Nazis.

An asteroid of 805 meters wide would likely wipe out the entire planet.
I don't think you realize the damage even a relatively small asteroid can do.

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This 1.2 km wide hole was made by a meteor only 40 meters across.

You have a meteor strike of 805 meters and it will be far worse than the most powerful volcanic eruption man has ever seen. Probably creating a hole 7 km wide and 1 km deep.

If they were interested in orbital bombardment messing with a typical meteor would be like trying to swat a fly by dropping a tall skyscraper on it. Way beyond overkill.
 
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Dinkenesh, or "o" pronounced "wonderful" in Amharic, is the Ethiopian name for the human ancestor fossil, also known as Lucy, although it was discovered in 1999.
 
Hope these expeditions aren't part of their weapons program to use asteroids as projectiles against targets on earth. Can't put it past these sick Nazis.
Humans have no capability to do such things so far, mostly small asteroids burn through atmosphere and large ones have enough mass that human can't do anything about these large asteroids
 
Humans have no capability to do such things so far, mostly small asteroids burn through atmosphere and large ones have enough mass that human can't do anything about these large asteroids
With attached rockets and calculated trajectory it is possible to prevent burn up.
 
No small ones have enough momentum that attached rockets can't do anything much
Not sure what you mean. As long as they can be directed into the correct trajectory they can be guided to target. Computers can give pretty accurate calculations.
 
Hope these expeditions aren't part of their weapons program to use asteroids as projectiles against targets on earth. Can't put it past these sick Nazis.
Even assuming evil intent, that will be a very expensive program with no guarantee of success. If it collides with earth, it may hit some most unexpected place.
 
Even assuming evil intent, that will be a very expensive program with no guarantee of success. If it collides with earth, it may hit some most unexpected place.
Once the rockets are attached it becomes just another re-entry vehicle and as we have seen the trajectory calculatioons are pretty accurate and you can pinpoint impact site.
 
Not sure what you mean. As long as they can be directed into the correct trajectory they can be guided to target. Computers can give pretty accurate calculations.
As said small ones have enough momentum and velocities attached rockets can't divert to the correct trajectory
 
Once the rockets are attached it becomes just another re-entry vehicle and as we have seen the trajectory calculatioons are pretty accurate and you can pinpoint impact site.
A natural object behaves very differently from a well-engineered reentry vehicle. Nobody would have done an engineering analysis on the composition, strength, distribution of mass etc., on an asteroid. No aerodynamic simulations or wind-tunnel testing is possible. As soon as it enters atmosphere, it usually starts disintegrating and the attached rocket is not attached to anything in particular. This project is like getting a wild animal home and trying to milk it or hitch it to a cart.
 
A natural object behaves very differently from a well-engineered reentry vehicle. Nobody would have done an engineering analysis on the composition, strength, distribution of mass etc., on an asteroid. No aerodynamic simulations or wind-tunnel testing is possible. As soon as it enters atmosphere, it usually starts disintegrating and the attached rocket is not attached to anything in particular. This project is like getting a wild animal home and trying to milk it or hitch it to a cart.
Thats why so many exploratory launches are being made to learn and use.

As said small ones have enough momentum and velocities attached rockets can't divert to the correct trajectory
Rockets are used for changing trajectory and momentum. It's simple physics.
 
Rockets are used for changing trajectory and momentum. It's simple physics.
The most recent large size bolide fell on Russia in 2013. It had a mass of 10,000 tons and a speed of 40,000 miles per hour. There is no technology that may be developed to control an object of this momentum and kinetic energy. In spite of it's large amount of energy (10^15 Joules), it broke up in atmosphere and created fairly minor damage (lot of glass windows broken). No one died and many people had minor or moderate injury. Its utility as a weapon is zero.
 
The most recent large size bolide fell on Russia in 2013. It had a mass of 10,000 tons and a speed of 40,000 miles per hour. There is no technology that may be developed to control an object of this momentum and kinetic energy. In spite of it's large amount of energy (10^15 Joules), it broke up in atmosphere and created fairly minor damage (lot of glass windows broken). No one died and many people had minor or moderate injury. Its utility as a weapon is zero.
You need to visit the local natural museums and see the sizes of meteors that have come down onto the earth from space. We have plenty in London's Natural history museum. Not sure what your point is, are you saying it's not feasible or it's not practical or it's not ethical? Firstly no more ethics, it seems everything goes these days. Secondly it is both feasible and pratical. Like any weapon it has its risks.
 
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