NASA's Lucy spacecraft has encountered the first of 10 asteroids on its long journey out to Jupiter
’s Lucy spacecraft on Wednesday encountered the first of 10 asteroids on its long journey to Jupiter. The spacecraft on Wednesday swooped past the pint-sized Dinkinesh, about 300 million miles away in the main asteroid belt beyond Mars. It was “a quick hello,” according to
, with the spacecraft zooming by at 10,000 mph . Lucy came within 270 miles of Dinkinesh, testing its instruments in a dry run for the bigger and more alluring asteroids ahead. Dinkinesh is just a half-mile across, quite possibly the smallest of the space rocks on Lucy’s tour. Lucy's main targets are the so-called Trojans, swarms of unexplored asteroids out near Jupiter that are considered to be time capsules from the dawn of the solar system.
launched Lucy on its nearly $1 billion mission two years ago. The spacecraft is named after the 3.2 million-year-old skeletal remains of a human ancestor found in Ethiopia in the 1970s. Lucy will next swing past an asteroid named after one of the fossil Lucy's discoverers: Donald Johanson. One of two solar wings on the spacecraft remains loose. Flight controllers gave up trying to latch it down, but it is believed to be stable enough for the entire mission.
is calling Asteroid Autumn. returned its first samples of rubble from an asteroid in September. Then in October, it launched a spacecraft to a rare, metal-rich asteroid named Psyche. Unlike those missions, Lucy will not stop at any asteroids or collect any samples. It will take at least a week for the spacecraft to send back all its pictures and data from the flyby.
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