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NASA\u2019s asteroid-studying spacecraft Lucy captured an image of its next flyby target, the asteroid Donaldjohanson. On April 20th, the spacecraft will pass within 960 km of the small, main belt asteroid. It will keep imaging it for the next two months as part of its optical navigation program. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Donaldjohanson is an unwieldy name for an asteroid, but it\u2019s fitting. Donald Johanson is an American paleoanthropologist who discovered an important australopithecine skeleton in Ethiopia\u2019s Afar Triangle in 1974. The female hominin skeleton showed that bipedal walking developed before larger brain sizes, an important discovery in human evolution. She was named Lucy.<\/p>\n NASA named their asteroid-studying mission Lucy because it also seeks to uncover clues about our origins. Instead of ancient skeletal remains, Lucy will study asteroids, which are like fossils of planet formation.<\/p>\n During its 12-year mission, Lucy will visit eight asteroids. Two are in the main belt, and six are Jupiter trojans. Asteroid Donaldjohanson is a main-belt, carbonaceous C-type asteroid\u2014the most common variety\u2014about 4 km in diameter and is Lucy\u2019s first target. It\u2019s not one of the mission\u2019s primary scientific targets. Instead, the flyby will give Lucy mission personnel an opportunity to test and calibrate the spacecraft\u2019s navigation system and instruments.<\/p>\n The animation below blinks between images captured by Lucy on Feb. 20th and 22nd. It shows the perceived motion of Donaldjohanson relative to the background stars as the spacecraft rapidly approaches the asteroid.<\/p>\n