Overview

• NASA's Lucy spacecraft completed a 600-mile flyby of asteroid Donaldjohanson on April 20, 2025, capturing detailed images of its unusual peanut shape.
• Scientists confirmed the asteroid's dimensions as approximately five miles long and two miles wide, with a contact-binary structure formed by a collision of two smaller bodies.
• The flyby served as a critical dress rehearsal for Lucy's primary mission to study Jupiter's Trojan asteroids, scheduled to begin in 2027.
• Additional data from Lucy's instruments, including surface composition and thermal properties, will be analyzed in the coming weeks to expand understanding of Donaldjohanson's geology.
• Launched in 2021, Lucy is on a 12-year mission to explore primitive asteroids, offering insights into early solar system formation processes.