NASA's Lucy spacecraft has glimpsed the asteroid Dinkinesh for the first time. Over the course of two months, Lucy will get closer and closer, testing its systems before a close flyby on November 1, 2023.
NASA's Lucy spacecraft has captured an initial image of the main-belt asteroid Dinkinesh, the first of 10 asteroids it will study over 12 years. Currently, "Lucy" is 14 million miles away from the "Dinkinesh" asteroid. It will approach the "Dinkinesh" asteroid within 265 miles on November 1, 2023, and use this close encounter to test its system. (Image of the Lucy spacecraft on the Trojan asteroid) Source: NASA
The tiny dot moving against a background of stars is the main-belt asteroid Dinkinesh seen for the first time by NASA's Lucy spacecraft, the first of 10 asteroids the spacecraft will visit during its 12-year journey of exploration. Lucy captured these two images (below) on September 2 and 5, 2023. The picture on the left is a flicker between the first two images of Dinkinis. In the image at right, the asteroid is circled to aid observation.
NASA's Lucy spacecraft captured these images of the asteroid Dinkinesh on September 2 and 5, 2023. Image source: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/JohnsHopkinsAPL
approach and mission objectives
Lucy took these images from a distance of 14 million miles (about 23 million kilometers) from the asteroid, which is only half a mile (about 1 kilometer) across. Over the next two months, "Lucy" will continue to move closer to "Dinkinesh" until its closest approach of 265 miles (425 kilometers) on November 1, 2023. The Lucy team will use the encounter to test spacecraft systems and procedures, focusing on the spacecraft's terminal tracking system, which is designed to keep the asteroid within the instrument's field of view as the spacecraft flies by at 10,000 miles per hour (4.5 kilometers per second).
Over the next few months, Lucy will continue to image the asteroid as part of its optical navigation program, which uses the asteroid's apparent position against a background of stars to determine the relative positions of Lucy and Dinkinis to ensure accurate flybys. During its lengthy approach, Dinkinesh will remain an indistinguishable point of light and will only begin to reveal surface details on the day of encounter.
Stellar Observations and Equipment
The brightest star in this field of view is HD34258, a magnitude 7.6 star in the constellation Auriga that is too dim to be seen with the naked eye from Earth. At this distance, "Dinkinesh" is only 19th magnitude, which is about 150,000 times dimmer than this star. On the right side of the picture is Polaris, which has a diameter of approximately 74,500 miles (120,000 kilometers). The observations were made by Lucy's high-resolution camera, the L'LORRI instrument (short for Lucy L Long Range Reconnaissance Imager), provided by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
Team and agency engagement
Lucy's principal investigator, Hal Levison, is a staff member of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, which is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Aerospace Corporation in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Lucy is the 13th mission of NASA's Discovery program. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages Discovery for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.