SUKABUMIUPDATE.com – An asteroid is a celestial body in the form of small fragments that move around the sun. Meanwhile, Jupiter is the largest planet among the four gas giants and the largest in the Solar System with a diameter of 142,984 km (88,846 mi) at the equator.
Most recently, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA has discovered the Dinky Asteroid with its moon near the planet Jupiter. In more detail, referring to Tempo.co, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft, which was first launched in 2021 to explore the Trojan asteroid trapped near Jupiter, made this interesting discovery.
Discovery of Asteroids Near Jupiter, NASA Investigates Dinky and Binary Pairs | Photo: X (Twitter) / @SPACEdotcom
NASA’s space probe (Lucy) discovered an asteroid, nicknamed Dinky, which actually has a smaller asteroid orbiting it, as reported by Scientific American. It’s basically a moon with its own moon.
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The technical term is a binary asteroid pair and Dinky, whose real name is Dinkinesh, was discovered by Lucy during a fast flight. At that time, the spacecraft saw a small “moon” orbiting it.
“Binary is certainly a possibility,” said Jessica Sunshine, a planetary scientist at the University of Maryland, to Scientific American, quoted via Tempo.co, Sunday (5/11/2023).
“But it wasn’t expected, and that’s really cool.”
Regarding the Dinky Asteroid and its satellite, NASA scientists still have a long way to go, because only about a third of the relevant data has been sent to Earth.
NASA has released a series of images showing Dinky and its pseudo-moon, but no actual data yet.
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But just from these images (of asteroids near Jupiter), you can find out a lot about these two celestial bodies. There is an equatorial ridge visible on the main part of Dinky aka Dinkinesh and a line of secondary ridges branching off from it.
The parent asteroid is covered in craters, likely caused by numerous impacts of other asteroids.
Hal Levinson, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and principal investigator of the Lucy mission, said there are many more images coming from secondary satellites and these images show that there are some “interesting” things happening to the junior asteroid. He went on to say that the shape was “very strange”.
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Binary asteroid pairs are not rare, as researchers have found that about 15 percent of near-Earth asteroids have cute orbital pairs.
NASA and affiliated researchers are still waiting for more data about the pair, including color images and spectroscopy that could provide more clues about the two asteroids. Levinson even said “there’s a lot of cool stuff coming.”
Meanwhile, Lucy will continue her original mission, to investigate some mysterious Trojan asteroids near Jupiter. Lucy will make contact with one of them in 2025.
Source: Tempo.co
Editor: Nida Salma
2023-11-05 06:00:00
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