main-belt asteroid
Dinkinesh
A tiny main-belt asteroid visited by NASA's Lucy in 2023, which surprised scientists with a contact-binary moon named Selam.
- Distance from Earth today
- 439.7 million km2.939 AU · light: 24 min 27 s
- Distance from the Sun today
- 321.9 million km2.152 AU
- As of
- 3 November 2026position from NASA/JPL orbital elements
Where it is today
Top view of the plane of Earth’s orbit, compressed distance scale. Open on the big map with the time slider →
Facts
- Diameter
- 0.72 km
- Mass
- 0.000000494 × 10¹⁸ kg
- Density
- 2,400,000 kg/m³
- Rotation period
- 52.7 h
- Semi-major axis
- 2.191 AU (327.8 million km)
- Perihelion
- 1.944 AU
- Aphelion
- 2.438 AU
- Orbital period
- 3.24 years
- Orbital eccentricity
- 0.113
- Orbital inclination
- 2.1°
- Last perihelion
- 3 March 2026
- Next perihelion
- 31 May 2029
- Minimum orbit distance from Earth’s orbit (MOID)
- 0.962 AU (143.9 million km)
Source of the figures: JPL Small-Body Database (public domain).
Discovery: 1999 – LINEAR survey
Description
Dinkinesh is a small main-belt asteroid discovered by the LINEAR survey in 1999. It was added to the itinerary of NASA's Lucy mission as a late test of the spacecraft's tracking system, and Lucy flew past it on 1 November 2023. The images revealed far more than expected: Dinkinesh has a ridge around its middle and a moon, later named Selam, which itself turned out to be a contact binary – two lobes resting against each other. The name Dinkinesh means "you are marvellous" in Amharic and is the Ethiopian name of the famous Lucy fossil that gave the mission its name.