Nasa's Lucy getting closer to asteroid Dinkinesh

 After capturing the asteroid Dinkinesh for the first time on September 3, 2023, the Lucy spacecraft (NASA's thirteenth Discovery Program mission) has traveled over 54 million kilometers and is now 7.6 million kilometres away from it. But the ship still lacks almost another 25 million kilometers before the meeting with Dinkinesh, scheduled for 1 November.

Overlapping of some of the images taken in the optic by Lucy’s L’LORRI instrument from 3 September to 3 October 2023, the trajectory of Lucy (in red) and the orbit of the asteroid Dinkinesh (in giallo). Credits: NASA/SwRI/APL.

Since Lucy first observed the asteroid on 3 September, NASA has used the images collected from its L’LORRI camera to more accurately measure the relative positions of the spacecraft and the Asteroid.

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Thanks to this information, on 29 September the spacecraft performed a small trajectory correction manoeuvre, changing the speed of the ship by only 6 centimeters per second. In this way the spacecraft will pass within approximately 425 kilometers from the asteroid.

On 6 October, however, Lucy passed behind the Sun in relation to the Earth, resulting in a planned blackout of communications. Despite this, the spacecraft has continued to acquire images of the asteroid that it is able to transmit to us these days.

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