NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft Snaps First Look at Upcoming Asteroid Target

The Lucy spacecraft just got its first good look at the main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson as the NASA mission prepares to explore the Trojan asteroids as far out as Jupiter. Donaldjohanson is not a Trojan asteroid, but is located in a convenient position for Lucy to swing by before continuing on to its main targets. Donaldjohanson—named for the anthropologist who discovered the fossilized hominid Lucy in 1974—is a small main belt asteroid at roughly 3 miles (4 kilometers) in diameter. Newly released NASA images show the asteroid as a faint smudge of light in two views captured by Lucy’s LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (or L’LORRI, for short). The images (below) show Donaldjohanson as it appeared 45 million miles (70 million kilometers) from Lucy. But the spacecraft will close that distance by April 20, 2025, when it is slated to make a close flyby of Donaldjohanson. During the flyby, Lucy will pass within 596 miles (960 kilometers) of the asteroid. Lucy launched in October 2021 an ... Read full article.