Lucy - Asteroid Dinkinesh Flyby

  • Released Sunday, October 1, 2023
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A top-down view of the inner solar system, with planets shown in gray, Lucy in teal, and Dinkinesh in pink. The Lucy/Dinkinesh close approach will occur on November 1, 2023.

The Lucy mission is already breaking records by planning to visit nine asteroids during its 12-year tour of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, which orbit the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter. Originally, Lucy was not scheduled to get a close-up view of any asteroids until 2025, when it will fly by the main belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson. However, the Lucy team identified a small asteroid in the inner main belt, designated (152830) 1999 VD57, recently named ‘Dinkinesh’, as a potential new and useful target for the Lucy spacecraft.

A top-down view of the inner solar system, with planets shown in gray, Lucy in teal, and Dinkinesh in pink. The Lucy/Dinkinesh close approach will occur on November 1, 2023. This version does not include a date stamp.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Sunday, October 1, 2023.
This page was last updated on Thursday, August 31, 2023 at 4:52 PM EDT.

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