The asteroid named (152830) Dinkenish, also known as 1999 VD57, has been added to NASA’s Lucy spacecraft mission, the Trojan asteroid probe, a group of asteroids whose orbit overlaps that of Jupiter.
Dinkenish is a rocky main belt asteroid. It has a diameter of about 900 meters, and was discovered on November 4, 1999 by the Lincoln Center for Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR). Scientists determined that Dinkenish rotates on its own for a period of 52.67 hours, and the changing brightness shows that it has an elongated shape. The Lucy LONng Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI) mounted on the Lucy spacecraft captured the first image of Dinkinesh 23 million kilometers from the asteroid.
Dinkenish is also the first of 10 asteroids that the Lucy spacecraft will visit during its 12-year journey, and scientists say the spacecraft will approach Dinkenish within 450 kilometers on November 1, 2566.
Source: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL
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