(ORDO NEWS) — The Lucy robotic interplanetary station, which is now on its way to its main target (two clusters of Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids), will rendezvous with asteroid 1999 VD57 to test the spacecraft’s scientific instruments.
Until now, asteroid 1999 VD57 with a diameter of about 700 meters, which moves in the main asteroid belt at a distance of about 330 million kilometers from the Sun, was an unremarkable space rock, but now NASA decided to give it a name.
The object was named Dinkinesh, which in Amharic (the language of Ethiopia) means “wonderful”. This name was not chosen by chance.
So in Ethiopia they call the skeleton of Australopithecus Lucy (the probe is named after her), which has become one of the most important anthropological finds in history.
Thus, NASA engineers emphasized that the Trojan asteroids can be compared with ancient fossils, whose study will provide an opportunity to learn how the planets of the solar system were formed.
The Lucy spacecraft will make a close flyby of the asteroid Dinkinesh on November 1, 2023. The minimum approach distance will be 450 kilometers.
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