Recent Examples on the WebEven Clyde Tombaugh, the dogged observer who discovered Pluto, got into the game, spending four years in the 1950s searching fruitlessly for an undiscovered moonlet.—Corey S. Powell, Discover Magazine, 28 Feb. 2020 Many had already deemed the mission successful after NASA shared footage of the DART spacecraft slamming into Dimorphos, a moonlet asteroid orbiting another larger asteroid.—Joshua Hawkins, BGR, 12 Oct. 2022 The Double Asteroid Redirection Test deliberately crashed into Dimorphos, an asteroid moonlet orbiting the larger space rock Didymos, to see whether a spacecraft can change the motion of a celestial body in space.—Ashley Strickland, CNN, 4 Oct. 2022 At various points before, during, or after the impact, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope observed DART’s target: the tiny moonlet Dimorphos, which orbits a larger asteroid called Didymos.—Jake Parks, Discover Magazine, 12 Oct. 2022 Dimorphos is a moonlet of the larger, 780 m (2,560 ft) asteroid Didymos, making one revolution around its parent rock every 11 hours and 55 minutes.—Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 12 Oct. 2022 The camera remained centered on the moonlet as the spacecraft fired its thrusters to stay lined up.—David W. Brown, The New Yorker, 6 Oct. 2022 Before the impact, scientists estimated DART might shorten the moonlet's orbital period by about 10 minutes.—William Harwood, CBS News, 11 Oct. 2022 Before the impact, the moonlet took 11 hours and 55 minutes to circle its parent asteroid.—Marcia Dunn, Anchorage Daily News, 11 Oct. 2022
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'moonlet.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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