When an asteroid is actually three
NASA’s Lucy probe performed a close flyby of the Dinkinesh asteroid on November 1, revealing not one, but three asteroids. The two moons, which rub against each other, were initially presumed to a single object. The space agency says it’s the first direct observation of a contact binary orbiting an asteroid. Lucy is currently en route to visit Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, but this served as nice sneak peak of its capabilities.
