Asteroid 'Dinky,' visited by NASA's Lucy spacecraft, birthed its own moon

Three grey space rocks in the blackness of space. the largest is alone on the left; the smaller two are on the right, touching one another.

Scientists may have learned the history of the tiny contact-binary moon orbiting asteroid 152830 Dinkinesh, which was the first cosmic stop for  NASA's Lucy spacecraft. That moonlet may have spun off its larger parent asteroid when Dinkinesh was sent twirling through space after absorbing and re-emitting sunlight.

Having launched in 2021, the Lucy mission is on its way to explore the Trojan asteroids, which share the orbit of Jupiter — but, to reach them, Lucy has to cruise through the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. In a silver lining, however, this has given Lucy the chance to test its prowess on a minor world in the asteroid belt before reaching the Trojans, which are positioned at Jupiter's L4 and L5 Lagrange points.