NASA’s Lucy mission has captured stunning new images during its latest asteroid flyby, revealing a bizarre, elongated space rock with an uneven, lumpy shape.
Released on Monday, the photos came just one day after Lucy’s close encounter with the asteroid, which served as a trial run ahead of more high-stakes missions near Jupiter. The asteroid, dubbed Donaldjohanson, turned out to be larger than scientists had predicted — stretching roughly 5 miles (8 kilometers) in length and about 2 miles (3.5 kilometers) across at its widest. With its peculiar, bowling pin-like form, the asteroid was too large to be fully captured in the spacecraft’s first image set.
NASA expects that more data downloaded in the coming week will provide a clearer picture of the asteroid’s structure and dimensions.
Lucy came within just 600 miles (960 kilometers) of Donaldjohanson during Sunday’s flyby, which took place in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The asteroid was named in honor of paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, who discovered the famous early human fossil “Lucy” in Ethiopia 50 years ago — the spacecraft’s namesake.
Launched in 2021, Lucy is on a long-term mission to explore the mysterious Trojan asteroids that orbit near Jupiter. Over the next eight years, it’s set to perform flybys of eight different Trojans, with the final one scheduled for 2033.