On November 1st, 2023, NASA's Lucy
spacecraft flew by the main-belt asteroid Dinkinesh.
Now, the mission has released pictures from Lucy's Long Range
Reconnaissance Imager, taken over a roughly three-hour period,
providing the best views of the asteroid to date.
During the flyby, Lucy discovered that Dinkinesh
has a small moon, which the mission named “Selam,”
a greeting in the Amharic language meaning “peace.”
Dinkinesh is the smallest main-belt asteroid ever encountered by a spacecraft,
and may have ejected the material that now forms Selam.
Lucy will swing by Earth in December 2024 for its second gravity assist,
boosting its orbit to reach Jupiter's Trojan asteroids in August 2027.
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