CNN —Astronomers were in for a surprise when NASA’s Lucy mission flew by an asteroid named Dinkinesh in November and spotted a contact binary — two smaller space rocks that touch each other — orbiting the asteroid like a moon. “Basically, the planets formed when zillions of smaller objects orbiting the Sun, like asteroids, ran into each other. The Lucy mission captured additional imagery revealing that the asteroid Dinkinesh’s moon is actually two space rocks that are touching one another. Too distant to be seen in detail with telescopes, the asteroids will get their close-up when Lucy reaches the Trojans in 2027. The mission borrows its name from the Lucy fossil, the remains of an ancient human ancestor discovered in Ethiopia in 1974.

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Persons: NASA’s Lucy, Dinky ”, ”, Hal Levison, Lucy, Dinkinesh, Goddard, Johns Hopkins, Keith Noll, Jessica Sunshine, ” Levison, Sunshine, Selam, “ I’m, “, NASA Galileo, Ida, Lucy’s, NASA Lucy, ” Sunshine, Dinky Organizations: CNN —, Southwest Research, NASA, Goddard Space Flight, University of Maryland, College Locations: Boulder , Colorado, Greenbelt , Maryland, Dinkinesh, Ethiopia, Jupiter