NASA's Lucy asteroid mission adds 10th space rock target

Lucy will fly by the small main belt asteroid 1999 VD57 on Nov. 1.

's Trojan asteroids, which orbit the sun ahead of and behind the giant gas planet, reaching these groups in 2027 and 2033 respectively., or stony, asteroid with the provisional name Dinkinesh, Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator and a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, said on Thursday at a presentation to NASA's Small Bodies Advisory Group.

Lucy's original trajectory would have taken it within 40,000 miles of the 2,300-foot diameter asteroid, but a series of small maneuvers beginning in May will allow the spacecraft to make a much closer approach, coming within approximately 280 miles on Nov. 1. A diagram showing the path of the Lucy spacecraft in 2023, including a close flyby of the asteroid 1999 VD57.

The flyby will give the team an early opportunity to test its twin Terminal Tracking Cameras , which the spacecraft will mainly use to automatically lock onto and track asteroids during flybys and make sure Lucy's other instruments are pointed in the right direction, which has traditionally been tricky.

"In the past, most flyby missions have accounted for this uncertainty by taking a lot of images of the region where the asteroid might be, meaning low efficiency and lots of images of blank space," Levison said in a

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