NASA’s Lucy spacecraft successfully flew by asteroid Donaldjohanson, capturing images of its double-lobed shape and confirming it as a contact binary. The spacecraft sent back high-quality imagery documenting the asteroid’s elongated object with two ridges in its narrow neck, likening its structure to “nested ice cream cones.”
Asteroid Donaldjohanson is approximately 5 miles long and 2 miles wide, making it larger than previously thought. Lucy, launched in 2020, made its encounter three years later on April 20, 2023. This was the spacecraft’s second target asteroid, following Dinkinesh, which also turned out to be a contact binary.
The mission is part of NASA’s $989 million Lucy program aimed at studying Jupiter Trojan asteroids. The spacecraft will spend most of this year traveling through the main asteroid belt before encountering its first Jupiter Trojan asteroid in August 2027. Over several encounters between 2027 and 2033, Lucy will gather data on these asteroids and potentially open a new window into the history of our solar system.
The Lucy mission’s principal investigator notes that studying complex structures like those found on Donaldjohanson could reveal valuable information about planetary formation processes in our solar system. The spacecraft’s instruments demonstrated their capabilities during the recent flyby, and researchers are eager to analyze the data from this encounter.
Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-reveals-stunning-closeup-of-bizarre-looking-asteroid