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Asteroid ‘Dinkinesh’/Lucy spacecraft
November 7 , 2023
536 days
519
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- The Lucy spacecraft, launched in 2021 successfully completed a flyby of the small asteroid Dinkinesh.
- It discovered it is not one single asteroid, but a system of two, with a small 220m-wide satellite spinning around it.
- Dinkinesh is barely a half-mile (790 meters) across.
- Its closely circling moon is a mere one-tenth-of-a-mile (220 metres) in size.
- The mission's main targets are a group of eight asteroids known as the Trojans.
- The spacecraft will reach the first of these so-called Trojan asteroids in 2027 and explore them for at least six years.
- The original target list of seven asteroids now stands at 11.
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