Latest news with #DonaldJohanson
International Business Times
07-07-2025
- Science
- International Business Times
NASA Shares First Complete View of Unusual Peanut-Shaped Asteroid Donaldjohanson
Finally, scientists working on NASA's Lucy mission are completing the process of fine-tuning the data collected by the spacecraft's encounter with Donaldjohanson, an asteroid in the main asteroid belt of our solar system, on April 20. And it's just as peanut shaped as we initially thought. At a distance of roughly 600 miles (960 kilometers), Lucy's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager captured a picture of Donaldjohansson earlier this year as it swiftly flew by it. The smallest features visible were about 130 feet (40 meters) across, which is an amazing close-up given the size of everything we see in space. Unfortunately, the Sun's position behind Lucy made the asteroid's finer details less noticeable. Even so, the close visit is crucial because it enables scientists to meticulously examine the surface's details after correcting for brightness. Hal Levison, Lucy's principal investigator, in an earlier press release about the asteroid, said, "Asteroid Donaldjohanson has strikingly complicated geology". About 150 million years ago, two smaller objects collided in space, giving Donaldjohansson its lumpy shape. Given that smaller asteroids in the solar system have a similar shape, Donald Johanson's findings may help us comprehend a wide range of other celestial objects. "As we study the complex structures in detail, they will reveal important information about the building blocks and collisional processes that formed the planets in our Solar System," Levison added. The Lucy mission's itinerary includes visiting the eight Trojan asteroids that orbit Jupiter in the same orbit as the Sun, and Donaldjohansson is not its primary goal. However, NASA's Erin Morton said earlier this week that Lucy's Donaldjohanson encounter—as well as the November 2023 flyby of asteroid Dinkinesh—is a great "dress rehearsal" for Lucy as it continues its journey toward the cooler, outer regions of the solar system. The next significant event for Lucy is scheduled for August 2027, when the spacecraft will begin exploring the Jupiter Trojan asteroids in earnest. Eurybates is a carbonaceous asteroid so large that it has its own satellite, Queta.
NDTV
04-07-2025
- Science
- NDTV
Watch: NASA Mission Captures First Close Look At Peanut-Shaped Asteroid
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has released the first-ever high-resolution image of the main-belt asteroid Donaldjohanson, highlighting its unique peanut shape. This came after NASA's Lucy mission had a key encounter with this asteroid in the solar system's main asteroid belt on April 20. This fly-by was a crucial milestone as it prepares for its primary mission of exploring Jupiter's Trojan asteroids. The spacecraft took high-resolution images using its L'LORRI imager a few minutes before its closest approach to the peanut-shaped space rock. The images show that Donaldjohanson has an elongated shape, resembling a peanut with a rough and cratered surface. The images show that the asteroid is larger than previously thought - it is approximately 8 km long and 3.5 km wide at its widest point. It rotates very slowly, with one rotation completed in 251 hours. The Lucy mission team is analysing the data collected during the fly-by to better understand the asteroid's structure and composition, according to a statement by the space agency. Sharing the image, NASA wrote, '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. This is the highest resolution image yet of the entire asteroid, taken just before it overfilled the L'LORRI field of view. The smallest visible features are about 130 feet (40 meters) across. The illumination conditions, with the Sun almost behind Lucy, greatly reduce the contrast of topographic details.' The asteroid is named after anthropologist Donald Johanson, who discovered the fossilised skeleton — called 'Lucy' — of a human ancestor. NASA's Lucy mission is named for the fossil, the agency said. NASA scientists said the "successful dress rehearsal" proves the team and spacecraft were ready for their main objective - exploring the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. The spacecraft is now in a quiet cruise period, travelling through the main asteroid belt at over 30,000 mph (50,000 km/h). When Lucy reaches the Trojan asteroids, it will make four encounters and observe at least six asteroids (including two satellites identified by the Lucy team) in less than 15 months. The first encounter will take place in August 2027, with the asteroid Eurybates.
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA spacecraft zooms by strange asteroid, beams back images
A NASA spacecraft is traveling to the most mysterious asteroids in the solar system. On the way there, it snapped images of the curious, elongated asteroid dubbed "Donaldjohanson." On April 20, the over 50-foot-wide Lucy spacecraft approached as close as some 600 miles from Donaldjohanson, which is aptly named for the discoverer of the famed Lucy hominid fossil, paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson. The craft sped by at 30,000 mph, and used a specialized camera to capture a detailed view of the five-mile-wide asteroid. The images show a unique-looking asteroid, with a narrow neck connecting the object's two lobes. SEE ALSO: If a scary asteroid will actually strike Earth, here's how you'll know "These early images of Donaldjohanson are again showing the tremendous capabilities of the Lucy spacecraft as an engine of discovery," Tom Statler, a NASA planetary scientist and program scientist of the mission, said in a statement. "The potential to really open a new window into the history of our solar system when Lucy gets to the Trojan asteroids is immense." New imagery of the asteroid Donaldjohanson captured by NASA's Lucy spacecraft. Credit: NASA / Goddard / SwRI / Johns Hopkins APL / NOIRLab (The asteroid seen in the animation above was observed at a distance of 1,000 to 660 miles away.) The Trojan asteroids — two swarms of diverse asteroids trapped around the gas giant Jupiter (one in front and one behind) — are of profound interest to planetary scientists. These asteroids can't leave Jupiter's potent gravitational influence, so Trojan meteorites likely don't land on Earth, depriving us of samples. Crucially, researchers suspect these icy rocks are captured relics of our solar system's formation some 4 billion years ago. If so, the Trojans are the smaller building blocks of planets. They can help tell us how Earth, and the other planets, came to be. "If we want to understand ourselves, we have to understand these small bodies," Hal Levison, a planetary scientist who leads the unprecedented mission to investigate the Trojans, previously told Mashable. "This is the first reconnaissance of the Trojan swarms," Levison added. This high-speed flyby of Donaldjohanson is the spacecraft's last "dress rehearsal" before it arrives at its first Trojan in August 2027, named Eurybates. To investigate the Trojans, Lucy is equipped with a suite of powerful cameras, including the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager, or L'LORRI, which captured the images above. While it's not unusual for an object in space to be a "contact binary" — meaning two objects that orbited so closely they eventually merged — NASA noted that "the team was surprised by the odd shape of the narrow neck connecting the two lobes, which looks like two nested ice cream cones." Donaldjohanson isn't a primary target of Lucy's mission, but its unusual shape and structure will provide further insight into the origins of such primordial space objects, how they formed, and how our world formed.
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA's Lucy probe captures 1st close-up images of asteroid Donaldjohanson, revealing 'strikingly complicated geology'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. NASA's Lucy spacecraft, currently headed toward Jupiter on an asteroid-hopping mission, has captured an impressive close-up of its second target: the space rock 52246 Donaldjohanson. Lucy launched in 2021, embarking on a 12-year journey toward Jupiter's orbit to study an unexplored swarm of asteroids called Jupiter's Trojans. These asteroids are remnants of our early solar system that share the giant planet's orbit around the sun. Along the way, the spacecraft is also squeezing in time for a few dress rehearsals for its Trojan targets down the road — and on Sunday (April 20), it swooped within 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) of the asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson, named after American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson who co-discovered the Lucy hominid fossil in northern Ethiopia in 1974. Images of the asteroid Lucy took as it approached the three-mile-wide (five-kilometer-wide) asteroid showed wide swings in brightness, suggesting it was either a slowly-rotating rock, appearing brighter when its longer sides faced the spacecraft, or an elongated object. Indeed, close-up images of the asteroid sent home by Lucy on Sunday confirmed both: The asteroid was once two smaller pieces that have conjoined into a larger whole, with a distinct narrow neck between the two lobes. "Asteroid Donaldjohanson has strikingly complicated geology," Hal Levison, the principal investigator for Lucy at Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, said in a statement. "As we study the complex structures in detail, they will reveal important information about the building blocks and collisional processes that formed the planets in our solar system." The new images show the asteroid appearing to rotate. However, this apparent motion isn't due to the asteroid itself spinning — which it does at a very slow rate of three years and eight months — but rather the result of the Lucy spacecraft whizzing by during its flyby at a relative velocity of 8.3 miles per second (13.4 kilometers per second), NASA said. Preliminary analyses of these images suggest the asteroid, which is likely a fragment of a collision about 150 million years ago, is larger than scientists initially estimated — measuring about 5 miles (8 km) long and 2 miles (3.5 km) wide at its widest point. Related Stories: — NASA's asteroid-hopping Lucy probe takes 1st images of its next target: Donaldjohanson — NASA asteroid surveyor snaps stunning views of Earth and moon on way to Jupiter's Trojans — Asteroid 'Dinky,' visited by NASA's Lucy spacecraft, birthed its own moon The images do not technically reveal the entire asteroid, to be clear, as it is larger than the Lucy imager's field of view. The mission team anticipates it will take up to a week to download the remaining encounter data from the spacecraft, which will provide a more complete picture of the asteroid's overall shape. "These early images of Donaldjohanson are again showing the tremendous capabilities of the Lucy spacecraft as an engine of discovery," Tom Statler, the program scientist for the Lucy mission at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in the statement. "The potential to really open a new window into the history of our solar system when Lucy gets to the Trojan asteroids is immense." Following this encounter, Lucy will spend the rest of this year cruising through the asteroid belt toward the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. Its first Trojan flyby, of asteroid Eurybates and its satellite Queta, is scheduled for August 2027.
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
See it: NASA's Lucy spacecraft sends back first close-up images of asteroid Donaldjohanson
NASA's Lucy spacecraft flew about 600 miles above an asteroid named Donaldjohanson on Easter Sunday, sending back the first close-ups of this oblong, potato-like object believed to be about 150 million years old. United Launch Alliance successfully launched Lucy on Oct. 16, 2021, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. After several gravity assists, the spacecraft is now in deep space, testing out its instruments on a few never-before-seen asteroids as it makes its way to the Trojan asteroids associated with Jupiter. Could Seashells Help Replace Plastics? California Researchers Think So After its first flyby of asteroid Dinkinesh in November, a main asteroid belt object, Lucy successfully made the second flyby of its mission, visiting Donaldjohanson on Sunday. This second encounter enabled Lucy's team to run a full test of its capabilities before heading on to study the Trojan asteroids. About 24 hours later, NASA and Lucy's team at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, shared the first images of asteroid Donaldjohanson. "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 information about the building blocks and collisional processes that formed the planets in our Solar System." The moving image above was pieced together with images taken about every 2 seconds using Lucy's Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager during the flyby. Glowing Aurora Lights On Uranus Help Scientists Determine A Day Is 28 Seconds Longer On Sideways Planet Asteroid Donaldjohanson is named after Donald Johanson, the American paleoanthropologist who uncovered the skeletal remains of Lucy, one of humanity's oldest known ancestors. The skeleton found in Ethiopia in 1974 was named after The Beatles' song "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" after a night of celebrating the discovery while listening to the band's songs. Lucy will continue traveling through the main asteroid belt before encountering its first Jupiter Trojan asteroid in August 2027. Associated with Jupiter because the asteroids are on the same orbital path, two groups of Trojan asteroids zoom ahead of Jupiter and trail behind the gas giant. These asteroids are made up of the same materials as the giant planets of our solar system: Jupiter, Saturn and article source: See it: NASA's Lucy spacecraft sends back first close-up images of asteroid Donaldjohanson
