NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captures images of peanut-shaped asteroid during 30,000 mph flyby

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has beamed back pictures from its latest asteroid flyby, revealing a long, lumpy space rock that resembles an odd-shaped peanut.

The space agency released the images Monday, a day after the close approach at a speed of more than 30,000 mph. It was considered a dress rehearsal for the more critical asteroid encounters ahead closer to Jupiter.

This asteroid is bigger than scientists anticipated, about 5 miles long and 2 miles wide at its widest point — resembling a deformed peanut. It’s so long that the spacecraft couldn’t capture it in its entirety in the initial downloaded images.

NASA also released a timelapse of images captured about every 2 seconds, showing the asteroid rotating very slowly, apparently due to the spacecraft’s motion as it flies by.

Data returned over the next week should help clarify the asteroid’s shape, according to NASA.

Lucy passed within 600 miles of the harmless asteroid known as Donaldjohanson on Sunday in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It’s named for the paleontologist who discovered the fossil Lucy 50 years ago in Ethiopia.

“Asteroid Donaldjohanson has strikingly complicated geology,” Hal Levison, principal investigator for Lucy at Southwest Research Institute, 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 spacecraft was launched in 2021 to study the unexplored so-called Trojan asteroids out near Jupiter. Eight Trojan flybys are planned through 2033.

“These early images of Donaldjohanson are again showing the tremendous capabilities of the Lucy spacecraft as an engine of discovery,” Tom Statler, program scientist for the Lucy mission at NASA Headquarters in Washington, 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.”

The spacecraft is named after the 3.2 million-year-old skeletal remains of a human ancestor found in Ethiopia, which got its name from the 1967 Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” That prompted NASA to launch the spacecraft into space with band members’ lyrics and other luminaries’ words of wisdom imprinted on a plaque. The spacecraft also carried a disc made of lab-grown diamonds for one of its science instruments.