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 ...

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.

The first Trojan asteroid on Lucy’s to-see list is Eurybates, which is much larger than Donaldjohanson—about 40 miles (64 kilometers) across.

NASA has released the Lucy spacecraft's first close-up images of asteroid Donaldjohanson, revealing a peanut-shaped rock that could shed light on how planets formed in our solar system.

NASA's Lucy mission is key to helping us understand the early history of our solar system as it studies asteroids like the Donaldjohanson. Named after the paleoanthropologist who co-discovered the ...

The asteroid Donaldjohanson as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager. This is one of the most detailed images returned by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft during its April 20 flyby.

Donaldjohanson is not the last asteroid Lucy will fly by, but it’s also not the first. The mission flew by the small asteroid Dinkinesh in November 2023—an itsy-bitsy asteroid at just 0.5 ...

On Easter Sunday (April 20), NASA's Lucy probe should have zipped past the asteroid Donaldjohanson, testing science instruments on the space rock.

It will be the second asteroid encounter for Lucy, launched in 2021 on a quest that will take it to 11 space rocks. Lucy’s first asteroid flyby was in 2023 when it swept past little Dinkinesh ...

This year marks half a century since the discovery of Lucy, a hominid fossil that would go on to drastically alter our understanding of human evolution. The man who unearthed her, Donald Johanson ...

NPR's Scott Simon speaks with paleoanthropologist, Donald Johanson, about the 50th anniversary of his biggest discovery, Lucy, an early human ancestor.