• NASA’s Lucy spacecraft obtained a close look at a uniquely shaped fragment of asteroid Donaldjohanson, that formed about 150 million years ago. 

• The spacecraft has begun returning images that were collected as it flew approximately 960 km from the asteroid on April 20, 2025.

• The asteroid was previously observed to have large brightness variations over a 10-day period, so some of Lucy team members’ expectations were confirmed when the first images showed what appeared to be an elongated contact binary (an object formed when two smaller bodies collide). 

• However, the team was surprised by the odd shape of the narrow neck connecting the two lobes, which looks like two nested ice cream cones.

• From a preliminary analysis of the first available images collected by the spacecraft's L’LORRI imager, the asteroid appears to be larger than originally estimated, about 8 km long and 3.5 km wide at the widest point.

Lucy mission

• Lucy is the first space mission to explore a diverse population of small bodies known as the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. 

• The space probe lifted off on schedule from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on October 16, 2021.

• Scientific evidence indicates that Trojan asteroids are remnants of the material that formed giant planets. Studying them can reveal previously unknown information about their formation and our solar system’s evolution.

• The Trojans orbit the Sun in two loose groups, with one group leading ahead of Jupiter in its path, the other trailing behind. 

• The asteroids in Jupiter’s Trojan swarms are as far away from Jupiter as they are from the Sun.

• Clustered around the two Lagrange points equidistant from the Sun and Jupiter, the Trojans are stabilised by the Sun and its largest planet in a gravitational balancing act. 

• Over its 12-year mission, Lucy will explore a record-breaking number of asteroids. It will fly by three in the belt of asteroids that circle the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and then eight Trojans, which includes five asteroid targets and the satellites of three of those. 

• Lucy also will fly by Earth three times to get a push from its gravity, making it the first spacecraft to return to the vicinity of Earth from the outer solar system.

• The Lucy spacecraft will spend most of the remainder of 2025 travelling through the main asteroid belt. Lucy will encounter the mission’s first main target, the Jupiter Trojan asteroid Eurybates, in August 2027.

Why is the mission named Lucy?

• The Lucy mission is named after the fossilised skeleton of an early hominid found in Ethiopia in 1974 by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray. 

• That Lucy in turn was named by expedition member Pamela Alderman after a celebratory evening dancing and singing to the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”.

• Just as that Lucy fossil provided unique insights into humanity’s evolution, the Lucy mission promises to revolutionise our knowledge of planetary origins and the formation of the solar system.