Lucy Spacecraft della Nasa captured the asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson in a video on April 20. Using the Lucy Long Range Recrogen Imager (Lorrii), the Asteroid Imagine Imagine every two seconds in a time that crossed points of view from a distance from 1,000 to 660 miles (1,600 to 1.100 km). Credit: NASA/Goddard/Swri/Johns Hopkins APL
Lucy Spacecraft della NASA visited the Asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson on Sunday 20 April, arriving within 600 miles (920 kilometers) from the object located in the internal region of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The asteroid took its name from the paleontologist Donald Johanson, who in 1974 co-scrolled the first identified example of a previously unknown hominid type. They called the “Lucy” specimen, which is what the mission takes its name. Like their homonymous, the mission and this asteroid could help us understand more about our origins.
The day after the meeting, NASA released the images of Donaldjohanson taken by the Lucy Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’arrii), the high -resolution camera of the trade. They revealed that the asteroid is 5 miles (8 km) – larger than scientists expected – and 2 miles (3.5 km) in its broader point.
The images also revealed the interesting form of peanuts of Donaldjohanson, with two lobes connected by a tight neck. It seems to be an elongated contact track, which occurs when an asteroid is made up of two objects that come together. But it could be more complicated than that, since scientists were surprised by the shape of the neck, reminiscent of two cones of nested ice creams, according to a press release from NASA. “The Asteroid Donaldjohanson has surprisingly complicated geology,” said Hal Levison, the main investigator for Lucy at the Southwest Research Institute, in the press release.
The information from the other Lucy tools will be downloaded from the boat and processed within the next two weeks. This will include infrared color images and spectra that could produce clues to the surface composition, the size of the particles and the level of radiation by Donaldjohanson.
Lucy’s mission will spend the next two years traveling through the asteroid belt, reaching its next goal on August 12, 2027: the asteroid 3548 Eurybates and its satellite, Queta. Eurybates and the rest of Lucy’s future objectives are Trojan Asteroids, a family of asteroids related gravitationally with Jupiter. During this leg of the mission, Lucy will meet a total of five trojans and three satellite objects. He will end his mission after flying from Asteroid 617 Patroclus and his Satellite Menetius on March 3, 2033.
RELATED: Surprise! The NASA’s Mission of Lucy discovered an asteroid moon that is actually two in one
