NASA’s Lucy Captures Stunning Views of Peanut-Shaped Asteroid in Latest Flyby

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft just pulled off its second asteroid flyby and imaged a frankly tasty-looking rock: a peanut-shaped asteroid named Donaldjohanson. The oblong asteroid is a fragment of a long-destroyed space rock that formed roughly 150 million years ago, and Lucy swooped within 600 miles (960 kilometers) of it on April 20, 2025, capturing some seriously wild close-ups. “These early images of Donaldjohanson are again showing the tremendous capabilities of the Lucy spacecraft as an engine of discovery,” said Tom Statler, NASA program scientist for the Lucy mission, in an agency release. “The potential to really open a new window into the history of our solar system when Lucy gets to the Trojan asteroids is immense.” Donaldjohanson—named for the anthropologist who discovered the fossilized hominid Lucy back in 1974, which gives the spacecraft its name—is relatively small, at roughly 5 miles (8 km) across. But that’s larger than earlier estimates; just a few months ago, when Lucy ... Read full article.