Daily Telescope: Lucy finds not one but two diamonds in the sky
Enlarge / This image shows the moonrise" of the satellite as it emerges from behind asteroid Dinkinesh as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager. (credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOAO)
Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light; a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We'll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we're going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.
Good morning. It is November 3, and today we have a treat from NASA. A couple of days ago I wrote about NASA's Lucy mission preparing to fly by its first asteroid target, the small main-belt asteroid Dinkinesh. Now, it is complete.
This flyby was not so much about the science but rather proving the capability of the spacecraft to point its instruments and take data while whizzing by an asteroid. In this case, Lucy zoomed by Dinkinesh at a speed of 10,000 mph (4,470 meters per second). And, as can be seen from the first images returned by Lucy, the spacecraft succeeded.