Wednesday, April 23, 2025

This just in; Lucy buzzes by an asteroid

 

The Lucy satellite, headed out to the Trojan asteroids that are gravitically tied to Jupiter, just flew by a regular asteroid, named "Donaldjohanson", which is named after the paleontologist that assembled and described the australopithecine skeleton named "Lucy". Now, the Lucy mission was named after the Lucy fossil, and the asteroid was named in 2015, so I don't know if the asteroid was named after the Lucy mission had been initiated. If it was named before the mission began (i.e., before funding and before a satellite was built), then it's a heck of a coincidence that the Lucy satellite would fly by this particular asteroid. I can't verify, but I suspect, it was named after the Lucy mission got started and they plotted a course past it.

Meet asteroid Donaldjohanson:  Long and Lumpy (Sky and Telescope magazine)

As I write this, not all of the images Lucy obtained have been sent to its Earth masters. This is what we have seen so far:


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