NASA has shared the first closeup images of the Donaldjohanson asteroid , captured by its Lucy spacecraft on a recent flyby around 139 million miles ( 223 million kilometer ) from Earth .

Our#LucyMissiontook a face at asteroid Donaldjohanson , its second asteroid encounter on its journey to Jupiter ’s Trojan asteroids . The first effigy reveal a unique fragment of an asteroid that formed about 150 million years ago ! discover out more : https://t.co / Bgg5CkQfYdpic.twitter.com / lgZRG8Qngh

Prior to Lucy ’s flyby , Donaldjohanson had only been observed from Earth , with no late space vehicle having visited it at close kitchen stove . Lucy ’s face-off provides the first elaborate , high - resolution views of the asteroid — believed to have organise some 150 million years old — revealing its form , geology , and other characteristics for the first time .

Lucy ’s images were gather up as the space vehicle aviate around 600 miles ( 960 km ) from Donaldjohanson on April 20 .

“ Asteroid Donaldjohanson has strikingly complicated geology , ” Hal Levison , principal investigator for Lucy , enunciate in a release . “ As we contemplate the complex structures in item , they will reveal crucial information about the construction blocks and collisional processes that formed the planets in our solar system of rules . ”

The squad studying the close - up images have been storm by the odd shape of the narrow neck connecting the two lobe , which NASA said “ appear like two nested ice cream cone . ”

Initial analysis of the imagery suggests that the Donaldjohanson asteroid is about 5 miles ( 8 km ) farsighted and 2 international nautical mile ( 3.5 km ) wide at the widest spot — larger than originally estimated .

NASA said it will take a few more days to downlink the rest of of the showdown data from the spacecraft , at which stage it will be capable to make a better judgment regarding the asteroid ’s overall shape . datum collected by Lucy ’s other scientific instruments — the L’Ralph color imager and infrared spectrometer and the L’TES thermal infrared spectrometer — will be retrieved and analyzed over the next few week .

Lucy also made a close flyby of the Dinkinesh asteroid in 2023 , but neither that one nor Donaldjohanson is the primary target of the Lucy mission . They were only flybys as the space vehicle heads to the Jupiter Trojan asteroid Eurybates , which it ’s countersink to accomplish in August 2027 .

“ These early images of Donaldjohanson are again show the rattling capabilities of the Lucy ballistic capsule as an engine of find , ” said Tom Statler , programme scientist for the Lucy mission . “ The potential to really open up a Modern window into the history of our solar organisation when Lucy get to the Trojan asteroids is huge . ”

And in subject you ’ve been wondering , the asteroid Donaldjohanson is named after American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson , who discovered the “ Lucy ” fogey skeleton in the cupboard in in Ethiopia in 1974 in what ’s consider as a cardinal find in the study of human evolution . The appointment of the asteroid honor Johanson ’s significant donation to scientific discipline , and also produce a symbolical link with NASA ’s Lucy ballistic capsule , which is itself named after the celebrated fogy .