“You Are Marvelous” Is the First, Unexpected Asteroid Target of the Lucy Spacecraft

That changes earlier in January 2023, when the team taking care of Lucy announced it’ll be altering course to meet up with another asteroid located much closer to its current position, as soon as November 1 this year. When the announcement was made, we only got the scientific name of the piece of rock, but that changed last week, when the thing also got an official, somewhat easier-to-digest name.

Until now, the scientific community knew the asteroid as 152830 1999 VD57. A very unimaginative designation, but with meaning for the people in this line of work: the first, long number (152830) has to do with its trajectory, the second one (in this case 1999) is the year when it was discovered, while the third particle (VD57) represents the order of its discovery that year.

Now that 1999 VD57 has a destiny more intertwined with our own, a request was made to the International Astronomical Union for the approval of a more human name for the asteroid. The request was approved, and the rock will from now on be known as Dinkinesh.

Now, as some of you already know, the Lucy spacecraft took its name after the fossils of a female Australopithecus afarensis which was discovered in Africa (Ethiopia) in the 1970s, and which is considered to be one of the most important finds of this kind in history.

Dinkinesh is a word in Amharic, one of the official languages of Ethiopia, and coincidentally the name by which the local population refers to the Australopithecus fossil. It loosely translates to “you are marvelous,” and it is from now on an official designation for the 1999 VD57 asteroid.

Lucy’s official mission is to have a look at eight asteroids orbiting in the main asteroid belt and in a group called the Trojans. It will do so with an array of instruments meant to determine surface temperature, track silicates, ices and organics, determine composition, and, of course, snap pictures.

Although tested on Earth before being integrated into Lucy, these instruments will only prove their true worth once the spacecraft reaches its destination. Finding Dinkinesh more or less on the path taking it there (40,000 miles/64,300 km away from the main trajectory) will give scientists an opportunity to put them all to the test, but also fine-tune something called the terminal tracking system, “which is critical for precise imaging during these high-speed encounters.”

If the mission is successful, Dinkinesh will become one of the smallest main belt asteroids ever visited by a human spacecraft. It measures just 700 meters (2,300 feet) across, but even so, it could “reveal yet another aspect of the evolutionary history of our solar system.”