The spacecraft's first encounter with an asteroid won't happen until 2025 as Lucy flies through the main asteroid belt. The Lucy mission left Earth in October bound for the orbit of Jupiter and a group of asteroids known as the Trojans that tend to follow the giant planet around. Based on the latest findings, it could observe more space objects and collect more valuable data on Jupiter's ancient Trojan asteroids than originally anticipated.Teams working with one of NASA's newest spacecraft have made an unexpected discovery years before it's set to reach its ultimate destination: The smallest of the asteroids the probe plans to visit is orbited by an even smaller moon. The 1.5-ton Lucy spacecraft, which launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station aboard an Atlas V rocket on October 16th, set out to observe eight trojan asteroids. Japanese space agency JAXA's Hayabusa-2 mission, for example, recently showed that Earth's water may have come from asteroids, while NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is making its way to an asteroid named Dimorphos to test whether a spacecraft can successfully alter a hazardous space rock's trajectory. The Lucy mission is one of several asteroid missions that are uncovering new valuable information on ancient space rocks holding secrets of the early universe. In January 2021, Hubble Space Telescope images revealed that the Trojan asteroid Eurybates has a small orbiting moon. This isn't actually the first time the Lucy team has found a satellite orbiting one of its target asteroids. By comparison, the asteroid Polymede has a 17-mile (27-kilometer) diameter. The Lucy team's analysis showed that the tiny moon is only about 3 miles (5 kilometers) across. NASA's Lucy may uncover more than 8 Trojan asteroids 'Those two observers detected an object around 200 km (about 124 miles) away from Polymele. 'We were thrilled that 14 teams reported observing the star blink out as it passed behind the asteroid, but as we analyzed the data, we saw that two of the observations were not like the others,' Marc Buie, from the Lucy team at the Southwest Research Institute, said in NASA's press statement. Taking observations from different vantage points, the international teams were able to collaborate to precisely measure the shape, size, and location of Polymele. Twenty-six teams made observations on March 26th from different parts of the Earth. The measurements were taken earlier this year, after which scientists and astronomers analyzed the findings. 'We keep having to change the tagline for this mission, but that's a good problem to have.' 'Lucy's tagline started out: 12 years, seven asteroids, one spacecraft,' said Lucy program scientist Tom Statler from NASA headquarters in Washington. The new discovery of the moon orbiting Polymede means the Lucy spacecraft will observe more space rocks than originally anticipated. They were able to make observations of the asteroid as it aligned between Earth and a distant star, casting a strong silhouette. The Lucy spacecraft won't reach its first target until 2025, but the Lucy team has already made the impressive discovery of the moon orbiting an asteroid called Polymele.

NASA's Lucy mission: Observing Polymede from Earth

Two trojan asteroids are known to be orbiting near Earth, with one, called 2020 XL5, having been confirmed by observations in February this year. Trojan asteroids are space rocks that are locked into orbit near larger space objects – typically planets.

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