NASA probe Lucy passes second asteroid: Donaldjohanson is also split in two
Long before it reaches its destination, NASA's Lucy spacecraft delivers valuable data. Now it has passed a particularly unusually shaped asteroid.
Close-up of the asteroid Donaldjohanson
(Image: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab)
NASA's Lucy probe has passed its second celestial body, the asteroid Donaldjohanson. Once again there were surprises: From a distance of less than 1000 km, the probe took a look at the "uniquely shaped asteroid", writes NASA – which is once again split in two. This had been expected after previous observations, but not the "strange shape" of the middle section, which resembles two ice cream cones nested inside each other. Research director Hal Levison Southwest Research Institute speaks of a "strikingly complicated geology" of the celestial body and expects the observations to provide new insights into the formation of the planets in the solar system.
(Image:Â NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL)
Lucy passed the asteroid on Easter Sunday, preliminary data suggests that the celestial body is 8 km long and up to 3.5 km wide. It cannot be seen in its entirety in the first photos transmitted because it was too close to the camera. NASA has announced that it will be about a week before all the photos taken and data collected have been transmitted to Earth. The last time the probe flew past an asteroid, a surprise was hidden in the data. In the fall of 2023, it was only discovered belatedly that the mini-moon of the asteroid Dinkinesh consists of two objects of approximately the same size that touch each other.
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NASA also explains that the flyby of Dinkinesh was merely a first test of the systems on board, so the encounter with Donaldjohanson was now the dress rehearsal. The observations were carried out with a range of instruments to collect as much data as possible. Even the initial results would prove the "enormous capabilities" of the space probe, says project scientist Tom Statler from NASA. The probe has the potential to "really open a new window into the history of our solar system" if it hits its targets.
Lucy is named after a more than three-million-year-old fossil of the human ancestor Australopithecus afarensis and has been on a 12-year mission since October 2021. On this mission, it will visit and explore several asteroids that precede or follow Jupiter on the same orbit around the sun – the Jupiter Trojans. These primitive celestial bodies are considered fossils of planet formation. When it started its journey in 2021, only flybys of seven asteroids were planned, but then satellites were discovered on two of them and the originally unplanned detour to Dinkinesh was included. The probe will now cross the asteroid belt and is scheduled to reach its first Jupiter Trojan in August 2027.
(mho)
