NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft Set for High-Stakes Asteroid Encounter on Sunday

The Lucy mission is on a 12-year journey to explore a peculiar set of asteroids that lead and follow Jupiter as it orbits the Sun. As it journeys to these Trojan asteroids, the probe is preparing for its second stop at the main belt, approaching a mysterious space rock to practice for the main event. NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will carry out a flyby of the small main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson on April 20 at 1:51 p.m. ET, when it will come within an eerily close distance of 596 miles (960 kilometers) from the target. This is Lucy’s second encounter with an asteroid, but it is far more complicated than its first flyby, with NASA describing it as a “comprehensive dress rehearsal for Lucy’s main mission,” the space agency wrote in a news release. Lucy first laid its robotic eyes on Donaldjohanson in February and has been tracking the asteroid over the past two months to prepare for its flyby. Donaldjohanson, named after the discoverer of the Lucy hominid fossil, is a carbonaceous asteroid ... Read full article.