Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Lucy poster depicts the spacecraft’s long-term voyage.
Image credit: SwRI

Asteroid experts are pondering the scientific output from the NASA Lucy spacecraft as it shot by its celestial prey – the main belt asteroid named Donaldjohanson.

Hal Levison, principal investigator of the Lucy mission, said the spacecraft flyby of Donaldjohanson yielded a host of “don’t know” factors about the object.

Panelists describe the Lucy mission on April 22 at a special media event held at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado.
Image credit: Barbara David

As for its shape, Levison said that Donaldjohanson and the other Lucy targets are providing hints about how planets formed.

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

For more details, go to my new Space.com story –“‘Right now, we are in what has to be a Golden Age of asteroid exploration.’ Scientists celebrate NASA’s latest space rock flyby” – at:

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/right-now-we-are-in-what-has-to-be-a-golden-age-of-asteroid-exploration-scientists-celebrate-nasas-latest-space-rock-flyby