KUWAIT CITY, Nov 5: The small asteroid visited by NASA's Lucy spacecraft this week brought a big surprise to scientists, as it turns out that the Dinkenish asteroid has a companion, a small moon.

The discovery was made during Wednesday's flyby of Dinkenish, 480 million kilometers away in the main asteroid belt beyond Mars. The spacecraft took a picture of the two asteroids when they were about 435 kilometers away.

In the data and images sent to Earth, the spacecraft confirmed that Dinkenish does not exceed 790 meters in width, and the size of the moon that it closely orbits is 220 meters.

NASA sent the Lucy spacecraft to Dinkenish as training for larger, more mysterious asteroids near Jupiter.

The Lucy rover will reach the first of the so-called Trojan asteroids in 2027 and explore 11 of them for at least six years.

It is noteworthy that “Dinkenesh” means “You are wonderful” in the Amharic language in Ethiopia. It is also the Amharic name for Lucy, the 3.2 million-year-old remains of a human ancestor found in Ethiopia in the 1970s, and after which the spacecraft is named.

“Dinkenish has truly lived up to his name,” Hal Levison, chief scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, said in a statement. This is wonderful".