【Woman Who Does as Her Oppa Wishes (2024)】

As NASA's Lucy probe sped by the asteroid Dinkinesh at 10,Woman Who Does as Her Oppa Wishes (2024)000 mph, mission scientists spotted a surprise: This asteroid was actually two asteroids.

The space agency found that a smaller space rock some 720 feet across (220 meters) orbited the half-mile wide (790 meters across) Dinkinesh. Or so it appeared. Now, upon closer inspection, they've realized that smaller asteroid is actually two asteroids.

"As NASA’s Lucy spacecraft continued to return data of its first asteroid encounter on Nov. 1, 2023, the team was surprised to discover that Dinkinesh’s unanticipated satellite is, itself, a contact binary — that is, it is made of two smaller objects touching each other," NASA wrote in an update.

SEE ALSO: NASA spacecraft keeps on going faster and faster and faster

In the image below, snapped from 1,010 miles (1,630 km) away, you can see Dinkinesh on the left and the intriguing contact binary on the right.

The half-mile-wide asteroid Dinkinesh on the left and the intriguing contact binary on the right. Credit: NASA / Goddard / SwRI / Johns Hopkins APL

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The Lucy mission is en route to the mysterious and never-explored Trojan asteroids — trapped in two swarms around Jupiter and thought to be pristinely preserved building blocks of planets. The mission's first target is now known to be three asteroids. It's a target that mission planners wanted to visit before reaching the Trojans, to test the spacecraft's crucial abilities to track these distant objects at blazing speeds.

Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

This is the first contact binary asteroid planetary scientists have ever spotted in orbit around another space rock.

"We haven’t seen many up close, and we’ve never seen one orbiting another asteroid," John Spencer, the mission's deputy project scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, said in a statement. "We’d been puzzling over odd variations in Dinkinesh’s brightness that we saw on approach, which gave us a hint that Dinkinesh might have a moon of some sort, but we never suspected anything so bizarre!"

Want more scienceand tech news delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for Mashable's Light Speed newslettertoday.

---

Related Stories

---

• If a scary asteroid will actually strike Earth, here's how you'll know
• The mega-comet hurtling through our solar system is 85, yes 85, miles wide
• The best telescopes for gazing at stars and solar eclipses in 2024
• Vigilant amateur asteroid hunters keep watch for menacing space rocks
• NASA's sci-fi mission to move an asteroid is crucial for humanity

From a farther-away vantage point ("B"), mission scientists could see a better view of the surprise asteroids. Credit: Overall graphic: NASA / Goddard / SwRI // Inset "A": NASA / Goddard / SwRI / Johns Hopkins APL / NOIRLab // Inset "B": NASA / Goddard / SwRI / Johns Hopkins APL

The Lucy mission, named after the ancient remains of the famous fossilized human skeleton, will loop through the solar system, without slowing down, to investigate a half-dozen Trojan asteroids. They're like "fossils" from our solar system's formation from some 4 billion years ago; the untarnished Trojans are the type of smaller rocky and icy objects that would have contributed to making planets. It will help researchers understand how Earth, and the other planets, formed.

Each encounter will speed by at around 10,000 mph, capturing a wealth of information with an assortment of cameras, including one (a spectrometer) that can deduce what the asteroids are made of.

"We're not going to be able to blink," Hal Levison, a planetary scientist who leads the unprecedented mission to investigate the Trojans, told Mashable last year.

---

Featured Video For You

---

NASA spacecraft gets extremely close to volcanic world, snaps footage

---

• Science
• Entertainment
• Social Good
• Shopping
• Life
• Digital Culture
• Deals
• Games

• Best grocery deal: Spend $20 and get $5 off at Amazon
• Twitter can't stop comparing Thanos to various things that are not Thanos
• People are loving that deep fried kebabs sign in 'Avengers: Infinity War'
• Did 'Avengers: Infinity War' fix Marvel's villain problem? Nope.
• How to Secure Your Android Phone and Get the Most Out of Smart Lock
• Pakistan may have just set the hottest April temperature ever recorded
• Facebook tests news feed update hours before Zuckerberg's F8 keynote
• 8 TV moms we'd love to have around in real life
• Amazon Big Spring Sale 2025: Best air purifier deals from Dyson, Shark, LG, and more
• We now know at least one 'Avengers: Infinity War' character is alive

• Looking for hope on climate change under Trump? Cities are where the action is.
• Amazon's fulfillment centers will soon run on solar energy
• Trump's favorite techie thinks there should be 'more open debate' on global warming
• “What a Goddamn Writer She Was”: Remembering Alice Munro (1931–2024) by The Paris Review
• Here's who we think will fly to the moon with SpaceX
• The Host by Alana Pockros
• An intense cold snap turned this waterfront home into a striking ice castle
• I Got Snipped: Notes after a Vasectomy by Joseph Earl Thomas
• Best Kindle Paperwhite Kids deal: 24% off at Amazon
• Death by Sea by Rosa Shipley

• Acupuncture for pets is on the rise
• Twitter can't stop comparing Thanos to various things that are not Thanos
• Hands on with the LG G7 ThinQ: Android goes full notch
• NASA will launch its first little cubesats bound for Mars on Saturday
• Here are the glorious proposed logos for Donald Trump's Space Force
• Oh my God, Swedish meatballs apparently aren't Swedish at all
• BBC waives the licence fee for street parties watching the royal wedding
• We now know at least one 'Avengers: Infinity War' character is alive
• Switch 2 Nintendo Direct: Everything announced
• Just FYI, Twitter also sold data to Cambridge Analytica

• Analyzing Graphics Card Pricing: October 2018
• Facebook struggles to move past Cambridge Analytica
• No, Tesla's autopilot doesn't mean you can sit in the passenger seat
• Oh my God, Swedish meatballs apparently aren't Swedish at all
• Final Fantasy XV Mega CPU Battle
• We now know at least one 'Avengers: Infinity War' character is alive
• Gains in reducing America's smog problem have hit a dramatic slowdown
• Victims of bullying become the Avengers in uplifting photo project
• Amazon Big Spring Sale 2025: Best Apple deals on iPads, MacBooks, and more still live
• The surprising story behind Giancarlo Esposito's 'Westword' cameo