Latest news with #TomStatler
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA spacecraft zooms by strange asteroid, beams back images
A NASA spacecraft is traveling to the most mysterious asteroids in the solar system. On the way there, it snapped images of the curious, elongated asteroid dubbed "Donaldjohanson." On April 20, the over 50-foot-wide Lucy spacecraft approached as close as some 600 miles from Donaldjohanson, which is aptly named for the discoverer of the famed Lucy hominid fossil, paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson. The craft sped by at 30,000 mph, and used a specialized camera to capture a detailed view of the five-mile-wide asteroid. The images show a unique-looking asteroid, with a narrow neck connecting the object's two lobes. SEE ALSO: If a scary asteroid will actually strike Earth, here's how you'll know "These early images of Donaldjohanson are again showing the tremendous capabilities of the Lucy spacecraft as an engine of discovery," Tom Statler, a NASA planetary scientist and program scientist of the mission, 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." New imagery of the asteroid Donaldjohanson captured by NASA's Lucy spacecraft. Credit: NASA / Goddard / SwRI / Johns Hopkins APL / NOIRLab (The asteroid seen in the animation above was observed at a distance of 1,000 to 660 miles away.) The Trojan asteroids — two swarms of diverse asteroids trapped around the gas giant Jupiter (one in front and one behind) — are of profound interest to planetary scientists. These asteroids can't leave Jupiter's potent gravitational influence, so Trojan meteorites likely don't land on Earth, depriving us of samples. Crucially, researchers suspect these icy rocks are captured relics of our solar system's formation some 4 billion years ago. If so, the Trojans are the smaller building blocks of planets. They can help tell us how Earth, and the other planets, came to be. "If we want to understand ourselves, we have to understand these small bodies," Hal Levison, a planetary scientist who leads the unprecedented mission to investigate the Trojans, previously told Mashable. "This is the first reconnaissance of the Trojan swarms," Levison added. This high-speed flyby of Donaldjohanson is the spacecraft's last "dress rehearsal" before it arrives at its first Trojan in August 2027, named Eurybates. To investigate the Trojans, Lucy is equipped with a suite of powerful cameras, including the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager, or L'LORRI, which captured the images above. While it's not unusual for an object in space to be a "contact binary" — meaning two objects that orbited so closely they eventually merged — NASA noted that "the team was surprised by the odd shape of the narrow neck connecting the two lobes, which looks like two nested ice cream cones." Donaldjohanson isn't a primary target of Lucy's mission, but its unusual shape and structure will provide further insight into the origins of such primordial space objects, how they formed, and how our world formed.
CBS News
22-04-2025
- Science
- CBS News
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.
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA's Lucy spacecraft is about to have its second close encounter with an asteroid
A NASA spacecraft will make a close approach to an asteroid in the main belt on Sunday afternoon, in the second of several asteroid flybys planned for its 12-year mission to study remnants of the early solar system. The Lucy spacecraft will be 596 miles (960 km) from asteroid Donaldjohanson — named after the paleoanthropologist who discovered the 'Lucy' hominin fossil — at the closest point of its pass, which will occur at 1:51PM ET. Lucy will use three instruments to capture detailed observations as the object gets closer, rotating with the asteroid over a few hours to get the full picture. It will stop tracking just before the asteroid is nearest, when it'll have to shield its instruments due to the position of the sun to prevent damaging them. The spacecraft previously visited a small asteroid called Dinkinesh in 2023, and its observations revealed that the asteroid is orbited by what's known as a contact binary, or a peanut-shaped double moon 'made of two smaller objects touching each other,' NASA explained at the time. After Donaldjohanson, Lucy will move on to its main targets, a handful of 'Trojan' asteroids orbiting the sun in the same path as Jupiter. It's expected to reach the first of those objects in 2027. 'Every asteroid has a different story to tell, and these stories weave together to paint the history of our solar system,' Tom Statler, Lucy mission program scientist, said in a press release. 'The fact that each new asteroid we visit knocks our socks off means we're only beginning to understand the depth and richness of that history. Telescopic observations are hinting that Donaldjohanson is going to have an interesting story, and I'm fully expecting to be surprised — again.'
