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The Asteroid That Destroyed Dinosaurs Had a DEADLY Companion!
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By NASA
The asteroid Donaldjohanson as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI). This is one of the most detailed images returned by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft during its flyby. This image was taken at 1:51 p.m. EDT (17:51 UTC), April 20, 2025, near closest approach, from a range of approximately 660 miles (1,100 km). The spacecraft’s closest approach distance was 600 miles (960 km), but the image shown was taken approximately 40 seconds beforehand. The image has been sharpened and processed to enhance contrast.NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab NASA’s Lucy spacecraft took this image of the main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson during its flyby on April 20, 2025, showing the elongated contact binary (an object formed when two smaller bodies collide). This was Lucy’s second flyby in the spacecraft’s 12-year mission.
Launched on Oct. 16, 2021, Lucy is the first space mission sent to explore a diverse population of small bodies known as the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. These remnants of our early solar system are trapped on stable orbits associated with – but not close to – the giant planet Jupiter. Lucy will explore a record-breaking number of asteroids, flying by three asteroids in the solar system’s main asteroid belt, and by eight Trojan asteroids that share an orbit around the Sun with Jupiter. April 20, 2025 marked Lucy’s second flyby. The spacecraft’s next target is Trojan asteroid Eurybates and its satellite Queta in Aug. 2027.
Lucy is named for a fossilized skeleton of a prehuman ancestor. This flyby marked the first time NASA sent a spacecraft to a planetary body named after a living person. Asteroid Donaldjohanson was unnamed before becoming a target. The name Donaldjohanson was chosen in honor of the paleoanthropologist who discovered the Lucy fossil, Dr. Donald Johanson.
Learn more about Lucy’s flyby of asteroid Donaldjohanson.
Image credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A researcher inspects the interior of a male American horseshoe crab at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Known scientifically as Limulus polyphemus, the American horseshoe crab is vital to researchers’ understanding of the overall health of NASA Kennedy’s ecosystem.NASA They’re known as “living fossils”.
For over 450 million years, horseshoe crabs have been an ecologically vital part of our planet. They’re one of the few surviving species on Earth dating back to the dinosaurs.
At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the American horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) is one of more than 1,500 types of animals and plants you can find living on its over 144,000 acres, the majority of which is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service. Sharing a boundary with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and Canaveral National Seashore, NASA Kennedy is one of the most biologically diverse places in the United States.
The center’s land, water, and air species live alongside the symbols of America’s space program: the vital facilities and infrastructure that support the many launches at NASA Kennedy and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station as well as the rockets enabling humanity’s exploration of the cosmos.
Researchers measure the shell of a male and female American horseshoe crab at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Known scientifically as Limulus polyphemus, the American horseshoe crab is vital to researchers’ understanding of the overall health of NASA Kennedy’s ecosystem. Preserving NASA Kennedy’s wildlife while also fulfilling the agency’s mission requires a balanced approach. The American horseshoe crab exemplifies that balance.
Horseshoe crabs are keystone species in coastal and estuary systems like the ones surrounding Earth’s premier spaceport. By themselves, these resilient arthropods are a strong indicator of how an ecosystem is doing to support the migratory birds, sea turtles, alligators and other wildlife who rely on it for their survival.
“The presence and abundance of horseshoe crabs influence the structure and functioning of the entire ecosystem,” said James T. Brooks, an environmental protection specialist at NASA Kennedy. “Their eggs provide a vital food source for many shorebirds in coastal habitats, and their feeding activities help shape the composition of plants and animals that live at the bottom of the ocean or in rivers and lakes. Changes in horseshoe crab populations can signal broader ecological issues, such as pollution or habitat loss.”
As featured recently on NASA+, biologists survey NASA Kennedy’s beaches regularly for horseshoe crabs, counting each one they spot and tagging them with devices that lets researchers study their migration patterns and survival rates. The devices also track the crabs’ spawning activity, habitat health, and population trends, especially during peak breeding seasons in spring and summer.
All this data helps in assessing the overall health of NASA Kennedy’s ecosystem, but horseshoe crabs also play a vital role in humanity’s health. Their blue, copper-based blood contains a substance called Limulus Amebocyte Lysate, critical for detecting bacterial contamination in medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, and vaccines.
Their unique value in ensuring biomedical safety underscores why NASA Kennedy emphasizes ecological monitoring in addition to its roles in the global space economy, national defense, and space exploration.
A male and female American horseshoe crab meet during mating season at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Known scientifically as Limulus polyphemus, the American horseshoe crab is vital to researchers’ understanding of the overall health of NASA Kennedy’s ecosystem. NASA At NASA Kennedy, horseshoe crabs are protected and monitored through habitat restoration projects like rebuilding shorelines eroded by storms and minimizing human impact on nesting sites. These initiatives ensure that the spaceport’s operations coexist harmoniously with nature and deepen our understanding of Earth’s interconnected ecosystems.
On this Earth Day, NASA Kennedy celebrates the important role these ancient mariners play as we launch humanity’s future.
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Messod C. Bendayan
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Last Updated Apr 22, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
4 min read
NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft Images Asteroid Donaldjohanson
In its second asteroid encounter, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft obtained a close look at a uniquely shaped fragment of an asteroid that formed about 150 million years ago. The spacecraft has begun returning images that were collected as it flew approximately 600 miles (960 km) from the asteroid Donaldjohanson on April 20, 2025.
The asteroid Donaldjohanson as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI) on NASA’s Lucy spacecraft during its flyby. This timelapse shows images captured approximately every 2 seconds beginning at 1:50 p.m. EDT (17:50 UTC), April 20, 2025. The asteroid rotates very slowly; its apparent rotation here is due to the spacecraft’s motion as it flies by Donaldjohanson at a distance of 1,000 to 660 miles (1,600 to 1,100 km). The spacecraft’s closest approach distance was 600 miles (960 km), but the images shown were taken approximately 40 seconds beforehand, the nearest ones at a distance of 660 miles (1100 km). NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL 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.
“Asteroid Donaldjohanson has strikingly complicated geology,” says Hal Levison, principal investigator for Lucy at Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. “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.”
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 5 miles (8 km) long and 2 miles (3.5 km) wide at the widest point. In this first set of high-resolution images returned from the spacecraft, the full asteroid is not visible as the asteroid is larger than the imager’s field of view. It will take up to a week for the team to downlink the remainder of the encounter data from the spacecraft; this dataset will give a more complete picture of the asteroid’s overall shape.
Like Lucy’s first asteroid flyby target, Dinkinesh, Donaldjohanson is not a primary science target of the Lucy mission. As planned, the Dinkinesh flyby was a system’s test for the mission, while this encounter was a full dress rehearsal, in which the team conducted a series of dense observations to maximize data collection. Data 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 weeks.
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.
“These early images of Donaldjohanson are again showing the tremendous capabilities of the Lucy spacecraft as an engine of discovery,” said Tom Statler, program scientist for the Lucy mission at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “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 asteroid Donaldjohanson as seen by the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI). This is one of the most detailed images returned by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft during its flyby. This image was taken at 1:51 p.m. EDT (17:51 UTC), April 20, 2025, near closest approach, from a range of approximately 660 miles (1,100 km). The spacecraft’s closest approach distance was 600 miles (960 km), but the image shown was taken approximately 40 seconds beforehand. The image has been sharpened and processed to enhance contrast. NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering and the safety and mission assurance for Lucy, as well as the designing and building the L’Ralph instrument. Hal Levison of the Boulder, Colorado, office of SwRI is the principal investigator. SwRI is headquartered in San Antonio and also leads the mission’s science team, science observation planning, and data processing. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for Lucy, as well as the L’Ralph instrument. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft, designed the orbital trajectory, and provides flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the Lucy spacecraft. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed and built the L’LORRI (Lucy Long Range Reconnaissance Imager) instrument. Arizona State University designed and built the L’TES (Lucy Thermal Emission Spectrometer). Lucy is the thirteenth mission in NASA’s Discovery Program, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
By Katherine Kretke
Southwest Research Institute
Media Contact:
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Nancy N. Jones
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Apr 21, 2025 Editor Jamie Adkins Contact Molly Wasser molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:02:14 On 12 March 2025, ESA’s Hera spacecraft soared just 5000 km above Mars and passed within 300 km of its distant moon, Deimos. Captured by Hera’s 1020x1020 pixel Asteroid Framing Camera, this video sequence offers a rare view of the red planet and its enigmatic moon. The original greyscale images have been colour-enhanced based on known surface features.
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By NASA
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft is 6 days and less than 50 million miles (80 million km) away from its second close encounter with an asteroid; this time, the small main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson.
Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.
NASA/Dan Gallagher This upcoming event represents a comprehensive “dress rehearsal” for Lucy’s main mission over the next decade: the exploration of multiple Trojan asteroids that share Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun. Lucy’s first asteroid encounter – a flyby of the tiny main belt asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite, Selam, on Nov. 1, 2023 – provided the team with an opportunity for a systems test that they will be building on during the upcoming flyby.
Lucy’s closest approach to Donaldjohanson will occur at 1:51pm EDT on April 20, at a distance of 596 miles (960 km). About 30 minutes before closest approach, Lucy will orient itself to track the asteroid, during which its high-gain antenna will turn away from Earth, suspending communication. Guided by its terminal tracking system, Lucy will autonomously rotate to keep Donaldjohanson in view. As it does this, Lucy will carry out a more complicated observing sequence than was used at Dinkinesh. All three science instruments – the high-resolution greyscale imager called L’LORRI, the color imager and infrared spectrometer called L’Ralph, and the far infrared spectrometer called L’TES – will carry out observation sequences very similar to the ones that will occur at the Trojan asteroids.
However, unlike with Dinkinesh, Lucy will stop tracking Donaldjohanson 40 seconds before the closest approach to protect its sensitive instruments from intense sunlight.
“If you were sitting on the asteroid watching the Lucy spacecraft approaching, you would have to shield your eyes staring at the Sun while waiting for Lucy to emerge from the glare. After Lucy passes the asteroid, the positions will be reversed, so we have to shield the instruments in the same way,” said encounter phase lead Michael Vincent of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. “These instruments are designed to photograph objects illuminated by sunlight 25 times dimmer than at Earth, so looking toward the Sun could damage our cameras.”
Fortunately, this is the only one of Lucy’s seven asteroid encounters with this challenging geometry. During the Trojan encounters, as with Dinkinesh, the spacecraft will be able to collect data throughout the entire encounter.
After closest approach, the spacecraft will “pitch back,” reorienting its solar arrays back toward the Sun. Approximately an hour later, the spacecraft will re-establish communication with Earth.
“One of the weird things to wrap your brain around with these deep space missions is how slow the speed of light is,” continued Vincent. “Lucy is 12.5 light minutes away from Earth, meaning it takes that long for any signal we send to reach the spacecraft. Then it takes another 12.5 minutes before we get Lucy’s response telling us we were heard. So, when we command the data playback after closest approach, it takes 25 minutes from when we ask to see the pictures before we get any of them to the ground.”
Once the spacecraft’s health is confirmed, engineers will command Lucy to transmit the science data from the encounter back to Earth, which is a process that will take several days.
Donaldjohanson is a fragment from a collision 150 million years ago, making it one of the youngest main belt asteroids ever visited by a spacecraft.
“Every asteroid has a different story to tell, and these stories weave together to paint the history of our solar system,” said Tom Statler, Lucy mission program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “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.”
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, designed and built the L’Ralph instrument and provides overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance for Lucy. Hal Levison of SwRI’s office in Boulder, Colorado, is the principal investigator. SwRI, headquartered in San Antonio, also leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft, designed the original orbital trajectory and provides flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the Lucy spacecraft. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed and built the L’LORRI (Lucy Long Range Reconnaissance Imager) instrument. Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, designed and build the L’TES (Lucy Thermal Emission Spectrometer) instrument. Lucy is the thirteenth mission in NASA’s Discovery Program, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
By Katherine Kretke, Southwest Research Institute
Media Contact:
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Nancy N. Jones
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Apr 14, 2025 EditorMadison OlsonContactNancy N. Jonesnancy.n.jones@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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