【Dear Utol: Week 1 Highlights Episode 7】

A NASA spacecraft is Dear Utol: Week 1 Highlights Episode 7traveling 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.

---

You May Also Like

---

---

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

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

(The asteroid seen in the animation above was observed at a distance of 1,000 to 660 miles away.)

Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

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.

---

Related Stories

---

• NASA dropped a new report. It's a wake-up call.
• Aliens haven't contacted us. Scientists found a compelling reason why.
• The best telescopes for gazing at stars and solar eclipses in 2024
• Space camera spots mysterious symbols in the remote desert
• These scientists think alien life best explains what Webb just found

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.

• Entertainment
• Games
• Life
• Social Good
• Digital Culture
• Deals
• Tech
• Science

• Analyzing Graphics Card Pricing: October 2018
• Kiki Smith: “Portraits, Celestial Bodies, and Fairy Tales”
• Ticketmaster is down thanks to Taylor Swift's Eras tour presale
• What’s going on with Drake's fake press tour?
• New MIT report reveals energy costs of AI tools like ChatGPT
• Whiting Awards 2017: Tony Tulathimutte, Fiction
• “A Song and the Sultan”: A Poem by Mahmoud Darwish
• 2022 election proves the youth vote is here to stay
• Best Hydro Flask deal: Save $10 on a 24
• 'Quordle' today: See each 'Quordle' answer and hints for November 9, 2023

• Girl uses Tinder to make money and you'll wish you thought of it first
• Sean Hannity is so very sad that Ted Koppel thinks he's bad for America
• Soon you'll have more Adam Sandler movies to avoid on Netflix
• This resistance group is sending Trump notes on toilet paper
• This app is absolutely exploding right now and it's all because of Snapchat
• One Direction's Liam Payne is officially a father
• Meet the woman behind 'Feud's' most fascinating character
• It's official: Uber's Travis Kalanick and Emil Michael are actually the worst
• Celebrities are weighing in on the United Airlines legging mess
• 'The Art of the Deal' gets a new chapter on Twitter after TrumpCare collapses

• ‘Jurassic World’: What was the headbutting dinosaur who saved the day?
• Hollywood’s Ongoing Love Affair with Barf Bags
• Walmart Black Friday Deals event: Get a Roku smart TV for $148
• Apple reportedly pauses iOS 18 development to focus on bugs
• Best rope light deal: Save 25% on Lepro N1 AI Smart RGB LED Strip Lights
• Origin Story: The Myth of Little John
• Whiting Awards 2017: Clarence Coo, Drama
• Best AirPods deal: Apple AirPods (2nd gen) are $69 at Walmart
• Episode 4: The Wave of the Future
• How to follow and unfollow someone on TikTok

• SpaceX's BFR has a new name. Elon Musk is calling it Starship.
• How to watch OSU vs. MSU football without cable: kickoff time, streaming deals, and more
• Anyone Can Tell You Penn Station Is Awful—It Takes a Writer to Show It
• How to see your report history on Instagram
• Best speaker deal: Save $30 on the JBL Clip 5
• How to share photos from your iPhone with Airdrop
• Whiting Awards 2017: Jen Beagin, Fiction
• Donald Trump will run for president again in 2024, and the internet isn't thrilled
• Amazon Prime Grubhub deal: Save $10 off orders of $20 or more
• How ‘Les Misérables’ Was the Biggest Deal in Book History