NASA's Lucy spacecraft discovers asteroid 152830 Dinkinesh has a binary moon.

NASA's Lucy spacecraft flew past asteroid 152830 Dinkinesh on Wednesday 1 November 2023, discovering that the asteroid had a binary moon in the process. The Lucy spacecraft, launched from Cape Canaveral on 16 October 2021, was named after the Hominin fossil Lucy, which in turn was named after the Beetles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds; the spacecraft carries a disc made of lab-grown diamonds for its L'TES (Lucy’s Thermal Emission Spectrometer) instrument. Lucy's primary mission is to explore Jupiter's Trojan Asteroids (asteroids permanently located in Jupiter's L₄ and L₅ Lagrange points. The trajectory of the probe was adjusted to make a flyby of 152830 Dinkinesh in January 2023, primarily as a way of testing its instruments on a suitable object.

An artist's concept depicting the Lucy spacecraft flying past the Trojan asteroid (617) Patroclus and its binary companion Menoetius. NASA/Southwest Research Institute/Wikimedia Commons.

The spacecraft first spotted the asteroid orbiting the 790 m asteroid at 4.55 pm GMT on 1 November 2023, when it was 430 km from the asteroid, passing it at a speed of 16 000 km per hour. At this time it was thought the second body was a single object roughly 220 m in diameter. However, the spacecraft took a second image looking back at the asteroid at 5.00 pm, revealing the satellite body to be a binary, made up of two similar sized objects in contact with one-another. 

A diagram showing the trajectory of the NASA Lucy spacecraft (red) during its flyby of the asteroid 152830 Dinkinesh and its satellite. NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies/Southwest Research Institute/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory.

While it was once thought that small asteroids lacked sufficient gravitational pull to have satellites, an increasing number have been shown to do so in recent years, and this is now thought to be quite common. Similarly, contact binaries, not predicted until they were discovered, are now fairly frequently observed. This is, however, the first time a moon of a small asteroid has been found to be a contact binary.

This image shows the asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager  as NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft departed the system. NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies/Southwest Research Institute/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Asteroid 152830 Dinkinesh was discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research Survey in Socorro, New Mexico on 4 November 1999. It was originally given the designation 1999 VD57, indicating that it was the 1429th object (asteroid D57 - in numbering asteroids the letters A-Z, excluding I, are assigned numbers from 1 to 25, with a number added to the end each time the alphabet is ended, so that A = 1, A1 = 26, A2 = 51, etc., which means that D57 = (25 x 57) + 4 = 1429) discovered in the first half of November 1999 (period 1999 V - the year being split into 24 half-months represented by the letters A-Y, with I being excluded). The longer designation 152830 implies that it was the 152 830th asteroid ever discovered, (these numbers are not assigned immediately, to prevent false sightings and repeat sightings of the same body being numbered). The name 'Dinkinesh' derives from 'Dink’inesh', which is the name given to the Lucy fossil in Amharic (the official language of Ethiopia, where the fossil was discovered), and means 'you are wonderful'. The name was chosen after it was decided that the asteroid would be a target for the Lucy spacecraft, and approved by the  International Astronomical Union's Working Group for Small Bodies Nomenclature on 6 February 2023.

The orbit and current position of asteroid 152830 Dinkinesh. JPL Small Body Database.

152830 Dinkinesh is calculated to have a 1185 day (3.24 year) orbital period, with an elliptical orbit tilted at an angle of 2.09° to the plain of the Solar System which takes in to 1.94 AU from the Sun (194% of the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun, and some way the orbit of Mars) and out to 2.44 AU (2.44 times the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun). It is therefore classed as a Main Belt Asteroid.

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NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter detects Luna 25 impact crator.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has detected a new crater on the Moon, thought likely to have been caused by the impact of the lost Russian probe, Luna 25, according to a press release issued on 31 August 2023. The crater is located on the inner rim of Pontécoulant G Crater, a position along Luna 25's planned trajectory, but about 400 km short of its intended landing site. This is approximately where Russia's Roscosmos space agency has predicted the probe impacted the Moon.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter views from 27 June 2020, and 24  August 2023; before and after the appearance of a new impact crater likely from Russia’s Luna 25 mission. NASA.

Roscosmos, has lost contact with its Luna-25 spacecraft on Saturday 19 August, after a thruster rocket fired for 127 seconds instead of 84 as was planned, and believes that it has been destroyed after crashing into the Moon. The probe was intended to mark Russia's return to the Moon for the first time since the Soviet Luna 24 probe in 1977, which was the first robotic probe to land on the surface of another Solar System body, collect a sample, and return to Earth.

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Russian Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the Moon, while Indian Chandrayaan-3 lands successfully.

The Russian Space Agency. Roscosmos, has lost contact with its Luna-25 spacecraft, and believes that it has been destroyed after crashing into the Moon. The craft was planned to land on the Moon on Monday 21 August 2023, but during a manoeuvre to enter Lunar orbit on Saturday 19 August a thruster rocket fired for 127 seconds instead of 84 as was planned, and contact was lost shortly afterwards.

The Luna-25 Probe being launched on a Soyuz 2.1b rocket, from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Amur Oblast of the Russian Far East on Friday11 August 2023. Roscosmos/Reuters.

The Lana-25 spacecraft was intended to land close to the Lunar South Pole, a region where there are theorized to be significant deposits of water ice, something likely to be of great use in the developing of any permanent Human outpost on the Moon. Discovering proof of this would have been a significant achievement for Roscosmos, demonstrating an ability to undertake serious space-exploration work without help from the European Space Agency, which pulled out of a supporting role in the mission following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This means that the first spacecraft to reach the area was be the Indian Chandrayaan-3 probe, which landed near the Lunar South Pole on 23 August.

The Soviet Luna-6 spacecraft performed the first successful soft landing on the Moon in February 1966, following the first successful orbit of the Moon by the Luna-3 spacecraft in October 1959. This orbiter-first-then-lander model was followed by the American Apollo Missions later in the 1960s, the Chinese Chang'e Program in the early twenty-first century, and most recently the Indian Chandrayaan Program, but has been skipped by recent the Russian attempt to return to the Moon.

This is the third Russian attempt to land a space probe on another Solar System body since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the third to have failed, with the Mars-96 mission to Mars in 1996 and the Phobos-Grunt mission to the Martian moon Phobos both having failed during their launch phase. The failure of the Luna-25 mission has now left many space experts both inside and outside of Russia questioning whether Roscosmos is capable of pulling of significant research missions on its own.

India, meanwhile, is celebrating the landing of the Vikram lander from its Chandrayaan-3 space mission, its's first successful lunar landing (the earlier Chandrayaan-2 crashed during a landing attempt in September 2019). The mission blasted off from Sriharikota Island, on the coast of Andhra Pradesh to the north of Chennai, on 14 July, taking a slower route to the Moon than most other missions, but one which used much less fuel, and which was therefore significantly cheaper), with the Vikram landing module separating from the main propulsion unit on 17 August, six days before eventually landing. If the mission continues as planned, the Pragyan Rover should shortly be deployed from the landing module, and spend the next few weeks exploring the area, and looking for the hoped for water ice.

The launch of the Chandrayaan-3 space mission from Sriharikota Island, Andhra Pradesh, on 14 July 2023. Indian Space Research Organisation/Wikimedia Commons.

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ExoMars Orbiter images the Perseverance Lander.

The European Space Agency/Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has spotted NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover, along with its parachute, heat shield and descent stage, in the Jezero Crater region of Mars, according to a press release issued on 25 February 2021. The images were captured with the orbiter’s CaSSIS camera on 23 February. The components are seen as dark or bright pixels in the images. 

 

ExoMars image of the Perseverance landing site. European Space Agency.

The rover landed on Mars on 18 February 2021, and was first identified in images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Perseverance will explore the Jezero Crater region of Mars, which is thought to have once hosted a lake, searching for signs of past microbial life. It will collect and cache samples of martian rocks and soil for subsequent missions to collect and return to Earth as part of the joint European Space Agency-NASA Mars Sample Return campaign.

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter provided significant data relay services around the landing of Perseverance, including supporting the return of the videos and imagery taken by the mission’s onboard cameras during the descent of the rover to the surface of Mars. The orbiter will continue to provide data relay support between Earth and Mars for NASA’s surface missions, and for the next ExoMars mission, which will see the European Rosalind Franklin rover and Russian Kazachok surface platform arrive at the Red Planet in 2023. At the same time, the Trace Gas Orbiter continues its own science mission, focusing on analysing the planet’s atmosphere with a special emphasis on searching for gases that may be linked to active geological or biological processes.

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NASA’s Perseverance Rover sends back its first images of Mars.

Less than a day after NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover successfully landed on the surface of Mars, engineers and scientists at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California were hard at work, awaiting the next transmissions from Perseverance. As data gradually came in, relayed by several spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet, the Perseverance team were relieved to see the rover’s health reports, which showed everything appeared to be working as expected, according to a press release issued by NASA on 19 February 2021.

 

This high-resolution still image is part of a video taken by several cameras as NASA’s Perseverance rover touched down on Mars on 18 February 2021. A camera aboard the descent stage captured this shot. A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterise the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust). Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with the European Space Agency, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis. The Mars 2020 mission is part of a larger program that includes missions to the Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers. NASA/JPL/Caltech.

Adding to the excitement was a high-resolution image taken during the rover’s landing. While NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover sent back a stop-motion movie of its descent, Perseverance’s cameras are intended to capture video of its touchdown and this new still image was taken from that footage, which is still being relayed to Earth and processed.

 

The Curiosity Mars Descent Imager captured the rover's descent to the surface of the Red Planet. The instrument shot 4 fps video from heatshield separation to the ground. NASA/JPL.

Unlike with past rovers, the majority of Perseverance’s cameras capture images in colour. After landing, two of the Hazard Cameras captured views from the front and rear of the rover, showing one of its wheels in the Martian dirt. Perseverance got a close-up from NASA’s eye in the sky, as well: NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance. Orbiter, which used a special high-resolution camera to capture the spacecraft sailing into Jezero Crater, with its parachute trailing behind. The High Resolution Camera Experiment camera did the same for Curiosity in 2012. JPL leads the orbiter’s mission, while the High Resolution Camera Experiment instrument is led by the University of Arizona.

Several pyrotechnic charges are expected to fire later on Friday, releasing Perseverance’s mast (the 'head' of the rover) from where it is fixed on the rover’s deck. The Navigation Cameras, which are used for driving, share space on the mast with two science cameras: the zoomable Mastcam-Z and a laser instrument called SuperCam. The mast is scheduled to be raised Saturday, 20 February, after which the Navcams are expected to take panoramas of the rover’s deck and its surroundings.

In the days to come, engineers will pore over the rover’s system data, updating its software and beginning to test its various instruments. In the following weeks, Perseverance will test its robotic arm and take its first, short drive. It will be at least one or two months until Perseverance will find a flat location to drop off Ingenuity, the mini-helicopter attached to the rover’s belly, and even longer before it finally hits the road, beginning its science mission and searching for its first sample of Martian rock and sediment.

A primary objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology research, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith, paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet.

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with the European Space Agency, will send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission and the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter technology demonstration for NASA.

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Asteroid (162173) Ryugu 1999 JU3 passes the Earth.

Asteroid (162173) Ryugu 1999 JU3 passed by the Earth at a distance of about 9 055 000 km (23.6 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, or 6.05% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun), slightly after 0.45 am GMT on Tuesday 29 December 2020. There was no danger of the asteroid hitting us, though were it to do so it would have presented a considerable threat. (162173) Ryugu 1999 JU3 has an estimated equivalent diameter of 850-880 m (i.e. it is estimated that a spherical object with the same volume would be 850-880 m in diameter), and an object of this size would be predicted to be capable of passing through the Earth's atmosphere relatively intact, impacting the ground directly with an explosion that would be about 120 million times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. Such an impact would result in an impact crater over 10 km in diameter and devastation on a global scale, as well as climatic effects that would last decades or even centuries.

 

Image sequence showing the rotation of (162173) Ryugu 1999 JU3. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency/Wikimedia Commons.

(162173) Ryugu 1999 JU3 was discovered on 10 May 1999 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Laboratory in Socorro, New Mexico. The designation 1999 JU3 implies that it was the 95th asteroid (asteroid U3 - in numbering asteroids the letters A-Y, excluding I, are assigned numbers from 1 to 25, with a number added to the end each time the alphabet is ended, so that A = 1, A1 = 26, A2 = 51, etc., which means that U3 = (25 X 3) + 20 = 95) discovered in the first half of May 1999 (period 1999 J - the year being split into 24 half-months represented by the letters A-Y, with I being excluded),  while the designation 162173 implies that it was 162 173th asteroid ever discovered (asteroids are not given this longer designation immediately to avoid naming double or false sightings). The name 'Ryugu' was given to the asteroid by the Minor Planet Center on 28 September 2015; it is a reference to Ryūgū-jō, the underwater palace of the Dragon Ryūjin. In Japanese folklore this palace was visited by the fisherman Urashima Tarō, who returned with a gift of a magical box. The name was chosen to reflect the visit to the asteroid made by the Japanese space probe Hayabusa2, and the box of samples it returned with.

(162173) Ryugu 1999 JU3 has a 474 day (1.30 year) orbital period, with an elliptical orbit tilted at an angle of 5.88° to the plain of the Solar System which takes in to 0.96 AU from the Sun (96% of the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun) and out to 1.42 AU (142% of the distance at which the Earth orbits the sun). It is therefore classed as an Apollo Group Asteroid (an asteroid that is on average further from the Sun than the Earth, but which does get closer). As an asteroid probably larger than 150 m in diameter that occasionally comes within 0.05 AU of the Earth, (162173) Ryugu 1999 JU3 is also classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid.  This means that (162173) Ryugu 1999 JU3 has occasional close encounters with the Earth, with the last thought to have happened in July 2016 and the next predicted in June 2015.  The asteroid also has occasional close encounters with the planet Mars, which it last cam close to in April last year (2020) and is next predicted to pass in January 2071.

 

The orbit of (162173) Ryugu 1999 JU3. Tom Ruen/Wikimedia Commons.

The Hayabusa2 spacecraft was launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in December 2014 and reached (162173) Ryugu 1999 JU3 on 27 June 2018. The spacecraft deployed four 'rovers' to the surface of the asteroid, which where cylidrical in shape, and able to 'hop' about by the movement of mass within the casing. These probes explored the surface of the asteroid, helping with the identification of a landing site for Hayabusa2 itself. The spacecraft landed on (162173) Ryugu 1999 JU3 on 21 February 2019, where it collected samples from the surface of the asteroid. A second set of samples were later collected by firing a metal bullet at the asteroid from orbit and collecting some of the ejecta. These samples were successfully returned to Earth on 5 December 2020. 

 

The surface of (162173) Ryugu 1999 JU3, as seen by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft when it landed on the asteroid's surface. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

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