The little asteroid visited by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft this week had a big surprise for scientists.
It turns out that the asteroid Dinkinesh has a dinky sidekick — a mini moon.
The discovery was made during Wednesday’s flyby of Dinkinesh, 480 million kilometers away in the main asteroid belt beyond Mars. The spacecraft snapped a picture of the pair when it was about 435km out, as it passed by at 16,000kph, in what NASA called “a quick hello.”
Photo: NASA via AP
In data and images beamed back to Earth, the spacecraft confirmed that Dinkinesh is barely 790m across. Its closely circling moon is a mere 220m in size.
NASA sent Lucy past Dinkinesh as a rehearsal for the bigger, more mysterious asteroids out near Jupiter on its nearly US$1 billion mission. Launched in 2021, the spacecraft is to reach the first of these “Trojan” asteroids in 2027 and explore them for at least six years. The original target list of seven asteroids has grown to 11.
The Trojans are swarms of unexplored asteroids that are considered to be time capsules from the dawn of the solar system. The spacecraft is to swing past eight Trojans believed to be up to 10 to 100 times bigger than Dinkinesh. It is due to zip past the final two asteroids in 2033.
Dinkinesh means “you are marvelous” in the Amharic language of Ethiopia. It is also the Amharic name for Lucy, the 3.2 million-year-old remains of a human ancestor found in Ethiopia in the 1970s, for which the spacecraft is named.
“Dinkinesh really did live up to its name. This is marvelous,” Southwest Research Institute researcher Hal Levison, the lead scientist on Lucy, said in a statement.
Until now, Dinkinesh has only been “an unresolved smudge in the best telescopes,” Levison said.
Lucy is next to swing past an asteroid named after one of the fossil Lucy’s discoverers: Donald Johanson.
PRECARIOUS RELATIONS: Commentators in Saudi Arabia accuse the UAE of growing too bold, backing forces at odds with Saudi interests in various conflicts A Saudi Arabian media campaign targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened the Gulf’s worst row in years, stoking fears of a damaging fall-out in the financial heart of the Middle East. Fiery accusations of rights abuses and betrayal have circulated for weeks in state-run and social media after a brief conflict in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes quelled an offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The United Arab Emirates is “investing in chaos and supporting secessionists” from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia’s al-Ekhbariya TV charged in a report this week. Such invective has been unheard of
US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Canada that if it concludes a trade deal with China, he would impose a 100 percent tariff on all goods coming over the border. Relations between the US and its northern neighbor have been rocky since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with spats over trade and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney decrying a “rupture” in the US-led global order. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that resulted in a “preliminary, but landmark trade agreement” to reduce tariffs — but
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) purge of his most senior general is driven by his effort to both secure “total control” of his military and root out corruption, US Ambassador to China David Perdue said told Bloomberg Television yesterday. The probe into Zhang Youxia (張又俠), Xi’s second-in-command, announced over the weekend, is a “major development,” Perdue said, citing the family connections the vice chair of China’s apex military commission has with Xi. Chinese authorities said Zhang was being investigated for suspected serious discipline and law violations, without disclosing further details. “I take him at his word that there’s a corruption effort under
RSS