[9] During the flyby, the Lucy spacecraft discovered that Dinkinesh has a contact-binary natural satellite, named Selam, which is 220 meters (720 ft) in diameter.

Dinkinesh was discovered on 4 November 1999 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) sky survey at Socorro, New Mexico.

[10] The LINEAR and Spacewatch (Kitt Peak, Arizona) surveys continued observing Dinkinesh until 15 November 1999, after which the asteroid became lost and went unrecognized for years.

[2][12] Gareth V. Williams, the associate director of the MPC at the time, recognized that 1999 VD57 and 2007 CB63 were the same asteroid and published the linkage on 2 March 2007.

[25] The asteroid was unnamed when it was selected for exploration by the Lucy spacecraft, so the Lucy mission team proposed the name Dinkinesh to the International Astronomical Union's Working Group for Small Bodies Nomenclature (WGSBN), which approved and announced the name on 6 February 2023.

[27] It was identified in August 2022 by Raphael Marschall, mission collaborator of the Nice Observatory, who investigated 500,000 asteroids for potential close approaches with the spacecraft.

[27] The Dinkinesh flyby served to test Lucy's autonomous tracking capabilities before it will apply them to its main science targets, the Jupiter trojans.

[9][31] After the flyby, Lucy's L'LORRI instrument continued observing Dinkinesh for four days to measure the asteroid's light curve.

[39][36] These mass shedding events occur when the asteroid rotates fast enough that material accumulates along the equator and becomes ejected into orbit by the centrifugal force.

[39] One possible explanation for the origin of Selam's contact binary nature is rotational fissioning by the YORP effect.

[41]: 170  If the collision between two satellites occurs at slow enough speeds (less than 50 mm/s or 2.0 in/s), the impact does not disrupt the shapes of the two bodies and instead forms a contact binary.

[35] Dinkinesh's shape resembles the near-Earth asteroids 101955 Bennu and 162173 Ryugu, which are known to have rubble pile interior structures consisting of rocks and dust loosely held by gravity.

[35] Visible light spectroscopy of Dinkinesh by two independent teams of researchers in November–December 2022 showed that it is an S-type asteroid, meaning it is mainly composed of rocky silicates and small amounts of metal.

[6][43]: 4, 6  On the other hand, spectral data from the 8.1-meter Gemini South telescope at Cerro Pachón, Chile showed that Dinkinesh's spectrum more closely resembles a standard S-type asteroid with a shallower 1 μm band.

[3][39] This is in agreement with the previous diameter estimates from measured absolute magnitude and average S-type asteroid albedo.