NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has captured its first images of asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson, which is currently 45 million miles away. The high-resolution camera L’LORRI spotted the asteroid moving against a background of stars. Lucy will track Donaldjohanson until April 20, when it will come within 596 miles of the asteroid.
This marks the first time Lucy has imaged an asteroid since its launch in 2021. The spacecraft has previously visited asteroids Dinkinesh and Selam in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Selam was a contact binary, meaning two separate objects held together by their mutual gravity.
Lucy will continue to explore asteroids as it approaches one of Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids in August 2027. After that, the spacecraft will head back to Earth in 2030 for a gravitational slingshot towards Jupiter’s L5 point in 2033.
The name “Donaldjohanson” is linked to the Lucy spacecraft, named after paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson who discovered the fossilized skeleton of an ancestor of humans. Like asteroids, fossils can provide insights into Earth’s origin and human evolution.
Source: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/asteroid-comet-missions/nasas-asteroid-hopping-lucy-probe-takes-1st-images-of-its-next-target-donaldjohanson