NASA's Lucy spacecraft snaps first close-ups of weird peanut-shaped asteroid
3 minute readPublished: Wednesday, April 23, 2025 at 4:09 pm
NASA's Lucy Spacecraft Reveals Peanut-Shaped Asteroid in Stunning Detail
Get ready for a cosmic surprise! NASA's Lucy spacecraft has beamed back the first close-up images of asteroid Donaldjohanson, and it's not your average space rock. This asteroid, located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is shaped like a giant peanut!
The images, captured by Lucy's Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager, reveal a complex geological structure, hinting at the asteroid's formation from the collision of two smaller objects. The "peanut" is estimated to be about 5 miles long and 2 miles wide at its widest point.
This flyby was a "full dress rehearsal" for Lucy's main mission: studying the Trojan asteroids, ancient space rocks orbiting the sun near Jupiter. Scientists hope that studying Donaldjohanson will provide valuable insights into the building blocks and collisional processes that formed the planets in our solar system. The Lucy mission, launched in 2021, is named after the famous Australopithecus fossil, "Lucy," because both are expected to unlock secrets about the origins of their respective subjects. The mission's principal investigator hopes that the study of the asteroid will open a new window into the history of our solar system.
Keywords: NASA, Lucy spacecraft, asteroid Donaldjohanson, peanut-shaped asteroid, Trojan asteroids, solar system formation, asteroid belt, space exploration, planetary science, asteroid images, asteroid geology, Lucy mission.