Lucy’s Second Test
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Read the news release: https://science.nasa.gov/image-article/nasas-lucy-spacecraft-images-asteroid-donaldjohanson/
Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Video imagery:
- Lucy’s observation of Donaldjohanson: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL
- Animations are all from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
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A white line moves through colorful images of space.
Title: News From the Universe.
May 13, 2025. Lucy's Second Test.
NASA's Lucy spacecraft has taken a close look at asteroid Donaldjohanson, named after the scientist who discovered the Lucy hominid fossil in 1974, after which the spacecraft is named.
Donaldjohanson is thought to have formed from a collision of smaller bodies about 150 million years ago.
In prior observations, astronomers noticed large changes in brightness and suspected that Donaldjohanson had an elongated shape.
The initial data from Lucy's observation confirmed some of the team's expectations, however the asteroid is larger than originally estimated at about 5 miles (8 km) long and 2 miles (3.5 km) across at its widest point.
The observation is Lucy's second, after its observation of the asteroid Dinkinesh in 2023. These observations were meant to test its systems and instruments.
By 2027, Lucy is slated to reach its primary mission target: Jupiter's Trojan asteroids. These asteroids, which share Jupiter's orbit around the Sun, have different compositions from one another, meaning they likely formed in different parts of the solar system.
Astronomers will study these asteroids to learn more about the history of planets in our solar system and how they developed.
This news was brought to you in part by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.