NASA’s Lucy Captures Stunning Views of Peanut-Shaped Asteroid in Latest Flyby

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft conscionable pulled disconnected its 2nd asteroid flyby and imaged a frankly tasty-looking rock: a peanut-shaped asteroid named Donaldjohanson.

The oblong asteroid is simply a fragment of a long-destroyed abstraction stone that formed astir 150 cardinal years ago, and Lucy swooped wrong 600 miles (960 kilometers) of it connected April 20, 2025, capturing immoderate earnestly chaotic close-ups.

“These aboriginal images of Donaldjohanson are again showing the tremendous capabilities of the Lucy spacecraft arsenic an motor of discovery,” said Tom Statler, NASA programme idiosyncratic for the Lucy mission, successful an bureau release. “The imaginable to truly unfastened a caller model into the past of our star strategy erstwhile Lucy gets to the Trojan asteroids is immense.”

Donaldjohanson—named for the anthropologist who discovered the fossilized hominid Lucy backmost successful 1974, which gives the spacecraft its name—is comparatively small, astatine astir 5 miles (8 km) across. But that’s larger than earlier estimates; conscionable a fewer months ago, erstwhile Lucy was farther away, researchers estimated that Donaldjohanson was astir 3 miles (4 km) across.

Below you tin spot the asteroid arsenic it appeared 45 cardinal miles (70 cardinal kilometers) from the spacecraft. Suffice to say, the caller images springiness america a amended presumption of the past rock.

Lucy’s archetypal presumption of asteroid Donaldjohanson (shown successful the square). Donaldjohanson is what scientists telephone a interaction binary, which occurs erstwhile smaller bodies collide and fuse—hence its distinctive peanut-like shape.

Lucy got a sneak peek of the main loop asteroid back successful February, arsenic the spacecraft prepares to research the Trojan asteroids arsenic acold retired arsenic Jupiter. Donaldjohanson isn’t a Trojan asteroid, but it was conveniently positioned for NASA’s Lucy spacecraft to plaything by connected a scenic detour en way to its main destination.

Donaldjohanson arsenic seen by L’LORRI connected April 20, from astir 660 miles (1,100 km) away. Image: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab

The flyby gave NASA researchers an accidental to trial Lucy’s colour image, infrared spectrometer, and thermal infrared spectrometer, arsenic good arsenic the L’LORRI imager that snapped the images astatine top. Those devices volition beryllium enactment to task erstwhile Lucy arrives astatine the Trojan asteroid Eurybates successful August 2027. Lucy is inactive precise aboriginal successful its mission, but it’s already catching glimpses of our star system’s past past.

Donaldjohanson is not the past asteroid Lucy volition alert by, but it’s besides not the first. The ngo flew by the tiny asteroid Dinkinesh successful November 2023—an itsy-bitsy asteroid astatine conscionable 0.5 miles (790 meters) across. It marked the archetypal clip a spacecraft had observed a interaction binary. In a star strategy filled with poorly understood objects, and with the Trojan asteroids connected the horizon, we person each crushed to anticipation that Lucy volition person galore much firsts successful its future.