NASA's Lucy spacecraft has captured the first-ever view of asteroid Donaldjohanson. It was reported by NASA the spacecraft’s closest approach distance was 600 miles (960 km). Credit: Space.com | image ...

Lucy and Donaldjohanson are connected by far more than their upcoming physical proximity. The NASA mission was named after the three-million-year-old fossil australopithecine skeleton discovered ...

While Donaldjohanson isn't considered a Trojan asteroid, the flyby provided a "dress rehearsal" for the Lucy mission before heading toward Jupiter to study the Trojan asteroids farther away from ...

Asteroid Donaldjohanson is named after Donald Johanson, the American paleoanthropologist who uncovered the skeletal remains of Lucy, one of humanity's oldest known ancestors.

NASA's Lucy spacecraft gets up-close look of strange peanut-shaped asteroid: See images Donaldjohanson is likely a fragment from a collision 150 million years ago, making it one of the youngest in ...

Donaldjohanson will continue to appear as an unresolved faint smudge until the April 20 flyby. The first Trojan asteroid on Lucy’s to-see list is Eurybates, which is much larger than ...

Asteroid Donaldjohanson as seen by the Lucy spacecraft from a range of about 1,700 miles (2,700 km), about 3.2 minutes before closest approach on April 20, 2025.

The first was a flyby of the asteroid Dinkinesh on Nov. 1, 2023. This Sunday, Lucy was expected to fly past her second target, the asteroid Donaldjohanson.Lucy would have past the asteroid at a ...

Before Donaldjohanson, Lucy had an encounter with the small asteroid Dinkinesh in 2023, which was found to have a tiny moon orbiting it.

Learn more about the Lucy mission "fly past 52246 Donaldjohanson -NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Dan Gallagher: Producer/Narrator Adriana Manrique ...

Asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson is named after American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson who co-discovered the Lucy hominid fossil in northern Ethiopia in 1974. Rock star hunt.

"Asteroid Donaldjohanson has strikingly complicated geology," Lucy Principal Investigator Hal Levison, with SwRI, said."As we study the complex structures in detail, they will reveal important ...