NASA’s Lucy Captures Gorgeous Views of Peanut-Formed Asteroid in Newest Flyby

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft simply pulled off its second asteroid flyby and imaged a frankly tasty-looking rock: a peanut-shaped asteroid named Donaldjohanson.

The rectangular asteroid is a fraction of a long-destroyed house rock that fashioned roughly 150 million years in the past, and Lucy swooped inside 600 miles (960 kilometers) of it on April 20, 2025, capturing some significantly wild close-ups.

“These early photos of Donaldjohanson are once more displaying the large capabilities of the Lucy spacecraft as an engine of discovery,” mentioned Tom Statler, NASA program scientist for the Lucy mission, in an company release. “The potential to essentially open a brand new window into the historical past of our photo voltaic system when Lucy will get to the Trojan asteroids is immense.”

Donaldjohanson—named for the anthropologist who found the fossilized hominid Lucy again in 1974, which provides the spacecraft its title—is comparatively small, at roughly 5 miles (8 km) throughout. However that’s bigger than earlier estimates; only a few months in the past, when Lucy was farther away, researchers estimated that Donaldjohanson was about 3 miles (4 km) throughout.

Under you may see the asteroid because it appeared 45 million miles (70 million kilometers) from the spacecraft. Suffice to say, the brand new photos give us a greater view of the traditional rock.

Lucy received a sneak peek of the principle belt asteroid back in February, because the spacecraft prepares to discover the Trojan asteroids as far out as Jupiter. Donaldjohanson isn’t a Trojan asteroid, but it surely was conveniently positioned for NASA’s Lucy spacecraft to swing by on a scenic detour en path to its foremost vacation spot.

The flyby gave NASA researchers a possibility to check Lucy’s shade picture, infrared spectrometer, and thermal infrared spectrometer, in addition to the L’LORRI imager that snapped the photographs at prime. These gadgets shall be put to job when Lucy arrives on the Trojan asteroid Eurybates in August 2027.

Lucy continues to be very early in its mission, but it surely’s already catching glimpses of our photo voltaic system’s historic previous.