NASA's Lucy mission has given a name to its first asteroid target. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) adopted the name (152830) Dinkinesh for the minor main belt asteroid that the Lucy probe will impact on November 1, 2023.
SciTech Daily reports that the name Dinkinesh, written as ድንቅነሽ, translates to "you are wonderful" in Amharic. It is the Ethiopian moniker for the human-ancestor fossil named Lucy, which was discovered and is being housed in that nation.
What Does NASA's Lucy Mission Aim to Achieve?
Asteroid Dinkinesh was first discovered in 199 and was given the provisional designation 1999 VD57. Several years later, it gained an official number (152830) after discovering its orbit. But it was left unnamed like many asteroids in the asteroid belt.
But due to NASA's Lucy mission, the team chosen it as the first target and named it an inspiration for Lucy's mission. Lucy project scientist Keith Noll from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said that the mission is named after the fossil that revolutionized the understanding of human evolution as they expect the mission to do the same in understanding the evolution of the Solar System.
In a press release, NASA revealed that the main reason the team added Dinkinesh to the already-packed tour of the mission was to test the spacecraft's innovative terminal tracking system that will precisely image the mission during the high-speed encounter.
They explained that the asteroid is an excellent target to test Lucy's systems before its main scientific activities, learning about Jupiter's Trojan asteroids, despite its small size.
Furthermore, mission scientists are equally thrilled about what this little asteroid can reveal. It will be the smallest main belt asteroid ever investigated. It is far smaller than recent near-Earth asteroids analyzed by spacecraft than before other missions visited main belt asteroids.
SwRI deputy principal investigator Simone Marchi said that if it goes as expected, they hope to see Dinkinseh be 100s of pixels across, as seen from Lucy's sharpest imager. They think the asteroid may reveal another aspect of the evolutionary history of the Solar System.
Asteroids NASA's Lucy Mission Visit
The Lucy mission was launched on October 16, 2021, to study unique space rocks in the asteroid belt. The mission will be powered by solar panels and scientific equipment that will observe the temperature, albedo, and surface features of the asteroids.
Space.com reports that the mission will study asteroids yet to be studied up close, known as Trojans, which are non-reflective rocks that orbit near Jupiter's orbit. Lucy is scheduled to fly past ten asteroids; two are main-belt rocks, and eight are Trojans.
Here is the list of asteroids Lucy mission will be studying:
- Dinkinesh
- Donald Johanson
- Eurybates
- Queta
- Polymele
- Leucus
- Orus
- Patroclus
- Menoetius
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