When NASA\u2019s Lucy mission flew past asteroid Dinkinesh on November 1, 2023, it made the surprising discovery the asteroid had a tiny moon. Then came another surprise. This wasn\u2019t just any moon, but a contact binary moon, where two space rocks are gently resting against each other. Of course, this new and unique moon needed a name, so the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has just approved approved \u201cSelam,\u201d which means peace in Ethiopia\u2019s language. <\/p>\n
But, everything\u2019s connected here. Dinkinesh is the Ethiopian name for the Lucy fossil, and Selam is named after another fossil from the same species of human ancestor.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n The Lucy mission is named after the hominid skeleton fossil called Lucy that was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. Lucy (in turn, named after the Beatles song, \u201cLucy in the Sky With Diamonds) is estimated to be 3.18 million years old. This fossilized human ancestor has provided unique insight into humanity\u2019s evolution. Likewise, the Lucy mission will revolutionize our knowledge of planetary origins and the formation of the Solar System.<\/p>\n The fossil Selam was discovered in 2000 in Dikika, Ethiopia, and belonged to a 3-year-old girl of the same species as Lucy. Even though this fossil is referred to as Lucy\u2019s baby, the \u201cbaby\u201d actually lived more than 100,000 years before Lucy.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seemed appropriate to name its satellite in honor of another fossil that is sometimes called Lucy\u2019s baby,\u201d said Raphael Marshall of the Observatoire de la C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur in Nice, France, who originally identified Dinkinesh as a potential target of the Lucy mission.<\/p>\n The flyby of Dinkinesh served as a test for Lucy\u2019s instruments on its way to the Trojan asteroids, a large group of asteroids that share the same orbit as Jupiter.<\/p>\n This first asteroid encounter for the Lucy mission really surprised everyone. Not only was there the surprise of the previously hidden contact binary, but the surprisingly high-resolution images revealed boulder-strewn surface on both small worlds. Up close, 790 meter-wide Dinkinesh looks a lot like 101955 Bennu, visited by OSIRIS-REx. NASA says that we can expect to see more images of the flyby with additional processing soon, saying that the team has completed downlinking the data from Lucy\u2019s first asteroid encounter and is continuing to process it.<\/p>\n The Dinkinesh encounter was added in January of this year as an in-flight test of the spacecraft\u2019s systems and instruments, and in a recent Lucy blog post by Katherine Kretke of the Southwest Research Institute, she says all systems performed well.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tools and techniques refined with data from this encounter will help the team prepare for the mission\u2019s main targets, the never-before-explored Jupiter Trojan asteroids,\u201d Kretke wrote. \u201cIn addition to the images taken by Lucy\u2019s high-resolution L\u2019LORRI camera and its Terminal Tracking Cameras (T2Cam), Lucy\u2019s other science instruments also collected data that will help scientists understand these puzzling asteroids.\u201d<\/p>\n The mission plan for Lucy is currently to visit 9 more asteroids over the next decade in 6 separate encounters. After an Earth gravity assist in December 2024, the spacecraft will return to the main asteroid belt where it will encounter asteroid Donaldjohanson in April 2025. Lucy will pass through the main belt and reach the mission\u2019s primary targets, the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, in 2027.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/Dinkinesh-square-md.jpg\")
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