Name Given to NASA's Lucy Asteroid Target

The name of the first asteroid that NASA's Lucy mission encountered has been revealed. The tiny main belt asteroid that Lucy will encounter on November 1, 2023, has been given the name (152830) Dinkinesh by the International Astronomical Union. The Ethiopian name for the fossilized human ancestor known as Lucy, which was discovered there and is now housed there, is "Dinkinesh," or in Amharic. Dinkinesh is Amharic for "you are wonderful."

The asteroid Dinkinesh was given the proviso designation 1999 VD57 when it was first discovered in 1999. Later, when the orbit was sufficiently well understood, it was allotted the official number (152830). It was not given a name, though, like the great majority of the millions of small asteroids in the main asteroid belt. But after choosing this asteroid as a target, the Lucy team suggested this new name, drawing inspiration from Lucy's mission to investigate relics of the early solar system.

“This mission was named for Lucy because just as that fossil revolutionized our understanding of human evolution, we expect this mission to revolutionize our understanding of the origin and evolution of our solar system” said Keith Noll, Lucy project scientist, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We are excited to have another opportunity to honor that connection.”

To test the cutting-edge terminal tracking system, which is essential for accurate imaging during these fast encounters, the team has added Dinkinesh to Lucy's already packed tour of 10 asteroids, including the recently discovered satellites. The asteroid is less than a km in diameter, but it is a great chance to test Lucy's systems before the mission's main scientific objectives—learning about the unexplored Jupiter Trojan asteroids, which are essentially fossils of our early solar system.

“This is really a tiny little asteroid,” said Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator, from Southwest Research Institute’s (SwRI) Boulder office. “Some of the team affectionately refer to it as ‘Dinky.’ But, for a small asteroid, we expect it to be a big help for the Lucy mission.”

A size comparison of (152830) Dinkinesh (shown in blue in the artist concept) to the main belt asteroid (2867) Steins and the near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu. Steins is currently the smallest, independently-orbiting main belt asteroid whose surface has been well imaged by a spacecraft (ESA Rosetta). The near-Earth asteroid Bennu was recently explored by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft with a sample return expected this September. As a tiny main belt asteroid, Dinkinesh will serve as a link between these two populations.
Credits: Montage by NASA Goddard, Image of Steins: ESA/OSIRIS team, Image of Bennu: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

Scientists on the mission are enthusiastic for what this tiny asteroid might teach us despite the fact that the primary goal of this encounter is to test the engineering. This will be the smallest main belt asteroid ever explored, and in comparison to other main belt asteroids that have been explored in the past, it is considerably smaller than recent studies of near-Earth asteroids.

“At closest approach, if all goes smoothly, we expect Dinkinesh to be 100s of pixels across as seen from Lucy’s sharpest imager,” says Simone Marchi, deputy principal investigator, also from SwRI. “While we won’t be able to see all the details of the surface, even the general shape may indicate whether near-Earth asteroids – which originate in the main belt – change significantly once they enter near-Earth space.”