Researchers using data from the Gaia mission’s third data release have found 3,038 binary asteroid candidates. These celestial pairs include an asteroid and a smaller moonlet. Using a novel ...

The first look at the Dinkinesh asteroid revealed a surprise: The small space rock had its own moon. Now as the Lucy spacecraft downlinked more images of its first target, it showed not one but ...

A solar radiation-triggered quake likely caused the asteroid Dinkinesh to lose material. Some of it became a moon that now orbits the space rock, new research found.

When NASA’s Lucy mission flew by its first asteroid this week, its cameras captured a surprise. The Lucy spacecraft zoomed by the small asteroid Dinkinesh, located in our solar system’s main ...

The first flight mission for planetary defense, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) seeks to validate a method to ...

Animation showing the binary pair. Gif: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/ASU. The asteroid was added to Lucy’s itinerary earlier this year in order to test the spacecraft’s instruments before it reaches the ...

New data about binary asteroids comes from ESA's Gaia mission, a space-based telescope which has spotted new potential moons around 350 asteroids. Skip to main content Menu ...

See asteroid Donaldjohanson up close thanks to NASA's Lucy mission | Space photo of the day for July 7, 2025 On Nov. 1, 2023, Lucy flew within 268 miles (431 kilometers) of Dinkinesh, which is ...

Preliminary studies of Lucy’s first images of the binary asteroid pair indicate that the bigger rock is about half a mile wide, while its satellite is about 0.15 miles wide.

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) spacecraft launched from California last fall and zoomed through space to reach a binary asteroid system — the larger Didymos and its smaller ...

NASA has discovered that an asteroid named Dinky is orbited by a tiny moon, forming a binary asteroid pair. In other words, it’s an even dinkier Dinky.

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will crash into the asteroid Dimorphos on September 26th, 2022. The mission is the first planetary defense test, and will try to change the orbit ...