NASA's Lucy spacecraft successfully completes first flyby of asteroid 'Dinky'

NASA on Wednesday confirmed that its Lucy spacecraft successfully completed a flyby of asteroid Dinkinesh or Dinky, a tiny space rock in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter. With this, Lucy hit a milestone as it made its first flyby on Nov 1 after its launch in Oct 2021.

"Based on the information received, the team has determined that the spacecraft is in good health," NASA officials wrote in a blog post after the flyby occurred. "The team has commanded the spacecraft to start downlinking the data collected during the encounter."

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NASA’s Lucy spacecraft made closest approach to asteroid Dinky

The Lucy mission of NASA is part of its ambitious endeavour to unravel the secrets of our solar system’s past. Lucy is only the beginning of the elaborate mission yet to be completed.

With Lucy, NASA will make a few flybys, relatively of nearby asteroids like Dinky. But the probe’s main goal is to fly by a few more distant Trojan asteroids orbiting the Sun alongside Jupiter. Scientists are interested in learning more about those Trojans because they're believed to be ancient relics of the solar system.

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Lucy’s flyby of Dinky can be seen as a test run of a much bigger mission to be launched in future. The spacecraft came within 270 miles ($35 kilometres) of Dinkinesh, testing its instruments. Dinkinesh is just a half-mile (1 kilometre) across, making it the smallest of the space rocks on Lucy’s journey.

Lucy mission

NASA launched Lucy two years ago with a budget of $1 billion. The spacecraft is named after the 3.2 million-year-old skeletal remains of a human ancestor found in Ethiopia in the 1970s. Lucy will make its next flyby near an asteroid that is named after one of the fossils Lucy discovered- Donald Johanson (named after American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson).

NASA’s Lucy mission is different from its other asteroid missions, like the Psyche mission. Lucy will not stop at any asteroids or collect any samples. It will take at least a week for the spacecraft to send back all its pictures and data from the flyby. Lucy will make more such flybys past ten different asteroids in the future.

(With inputs from agencies)