Context:
Recently, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has captured its first images of the main belt asteroid Dinkinesh, marking the beginning of a 12-year voyage.
Relevance:
GS III: Science and Technology
Dimensions of the Article:
- About the Dinkinesh Asteroid
- About the Lucy Mission
About the Dinkinesh Asteroid:
- Discovered in 1999 by the LINEAR survey.
- Dinkinesh is characterized as a slow rotator with a moderately large light-curve amplitude.
- It belongs to the S-type asteroid category, primarily composed of silicates with some metal.
- Dinkinesh is the first fly-by target of NASA’s Lucy mission, scheduled for November 1, 2023, during the spacecraft’s journey to the Trojan Clouds.
- Observations of Dinkinesh were made using Lucy’s high-resolution camera, the Lucy Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI instrument).
About the Lucy Mission:
- NASA launched the Lucy mission from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida in 2021.
- It is a 12-year mission aimed at closely observing nine of Jupiter’s Trojans and two main belt asteroids.
- Lucy is the first spacecraft sent to study the Trojan asteroids, which share the same orbit around the Sun as Jupiter.
- The mission has recently captured images of asteroids Eurybates, Polymele, Leucus, and others as it continues its exploration of these celestial bodies.
-Source: India Today
