NASA Reveals First-Ever Full Picture of Peanut-Formed Asteroid Donaldjohanson

Scientists with NASA’s Lucy mission are lastly wrapping up the method of refining the information gathered by the spacecraft’s April 20 encounter with Donaldjohanson, an asteroid in our photo voltaic system’s principal asteroid belt. And it’s, uh, as peanut-shaped as we first noticed it. 

Earlier this 12 months, Lucy’s Lengthy Vary Reconnaissance Imager snapped a picture of Donaldjohansson whereas rapidly swooping previous it, at a distance of about 600 miles (960 kilometers), with the smallest seen options measuring round 130 toes (40 meters) throughout—a powerful close-up, contemplating the general scale of something we observe in area. 

Regrettably, the Solar’s place behind Lucy decreased the distinction of the asteroid’s smaller particulars. However the shut go to is invaluable nonetheless, because it’s permitting scientists to fastidiously comb over the main points of its floor after adjusting for the brightness. 

“Asteroid Donaldjohanson has strikingly sophisticated geology,” mentioned Hal Levison, Lucy’s principal investigator, in an earlier press release concerning the asteroid. Donaldjohansson possible bought its lumpy form from a cosmic collision between two smaller objects round 150 million years in the past. It’s a comparatively frequent form amongst smaller asteroids within the photo voltaic system, so what we study from Donaldjohanson may inform our understanding of many different cosmic objects. 

“As we research the complicated buildings intimately, they’ll reveal necessary details about the constructing blocks and collisional processes that shaped the planets in our Photo voltaic System,” Levison added in the identical launch. 

Donaldjohansson is just not the primary goal of the Lucy mission, whose itinerary is ready for the eight Trojan asteroids that share Jupiter’s orbit across the Solar. Nonetheless, Lucy’s Donaldjohanson encounter—and the November 2023 flyby of asteroid Dinkinesh—is a wonderful “costume rehearsal” for Lucy because it continues its journey towards the cooler, outer areas of the photo voltaic system, based on NASA’s Erin Morton in a statement earlier this week. 

Lucy’s subsequent milestone is ready to happen in August 2027, when the spacecraft will lastly begin to discover the Jupiter Trojan asteroids in earnest—beginning with Eurybates, a carbonaceous asteroid so massive that it has its personal satellite tv for pc, Queta.