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Asteroid Belts of Just the Right Size are Friendly to Life
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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
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
Lucy Asteroids Goddard Space Flight Center View the full article
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By NASA
Explore This Section Science Science Activation Building for a Better World:… Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science 6 min read
Building for a Better World: Norfolk Students Bring STEM to Life with NASA Partnership
At Norfolk Technical Center in Norfolk, Virginia, carpentry students in Jordan Crawford’s first-year class aren’t just learning how to measure and cut wood—they’re discovering how their skills can serve a greater purpose.
When the NASA Science Activation program’s NASA eClips project—led by the National Institute of Aerospace’s Center for Integrative Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education (NIA-CISE)—needed help building weather instrument shelters for local schools, Norfolk Public Schools’ Career and Technical Education (CTE) team saw an opportunity to connect students to something bigger than the classroom. The shelters are used to house scientific equipment that K–12 students rely on to collect data using GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) protocols—a set of standardized, internationally recognized methods for gathering environmental data such as temperature, soil moisture, and cloud cover. These observations contribute to a global citizen science database, giving young learners a meaningful role in real-world environmental research.
Originally, shelters were being ordered from a national supplier to support GLOBE training sessions for teachers in GO (Growth & Opportunity) Virginia Region 5, an economic development region. These training sessions were funded through a generous grant from the Coastal Virginia STEM Hub (COVA STEM Hub), which supports regional collaboration in STEM education. But when the supplier couldn’t keep up with demand, Norfolk Public Schools CTE Specialist Dr. Deborah Marshall offered a bold solution: why not have local students build them?
That’s when the project truly took off. Under the guidance of Jordan Crawford, students took on the challenge of building 20 high-quality shelters in spring 2024, following precise construction plans provided through the GLOBE Program. Materials were funded by the COVA STEM grant, and the students rolled up their sleeves to turn lumber into lasting educational tools for their community.
“As an instructor, you look for opportunities that challenge your students, allow them to do things bigger than themselves, and let them see a project through from start to finish,” Crawford said. “This project allowed my students to hone existing skills and build new ones, and I saw incredible growth not just in craftsmanship but in teamwork. The most rewarding part was seeing the impact of their work in real schools.”
And the students rose to the occasion—taking pride in their work, learning advanced techniques, and developing new confidence. One of the most challenging parts of the build involved crafting the louvers—angled slats on the sides of the shelters needed for proper air circulation. Student Zymere Watts took the lead in designing and building a jig to make sure the louvers could be cut uniformly and precisely for every unit.
“Building the weather shelters was a fun and challenging task that pushed me to strive for perfection with each one,” said student Amir Moore. “After completion, I was delighted to see the faces of the people who were proud and happy with what we built.”
“It was an extreme pleasure working on this project. I would love to work with NIA again,” added LaValle Howard. “I am proud to be a part of this vocational school and team.”
Jaymyson Burden agreed: “It was fun and great to be exposed to the carpentry realm and install them in the real world. It was gratifying to know what we have done has an impact.”
After completing the shelters, the students volunteered to install them at seven Hampton City Schools. Their work completed the full circle—from building the shelters in their carpentry classroom to setting them up where younger students would use them to collect real environmental data.
Their dedication did not go unnoticed. The team was invited to NASA’s Langley Research Center for a behind-the-scenes tour of the NASA Model Shop, where they met Sam James, a Mechanical Engineering Technician and Fabrication Specialist. James showed the students how the same kind of craftsmanship they’d used is essential in the creation of tools and components for NASA missions. They also learned about NASA summer internships and discovered that their hands-on skills could open doors to exciting careers in STEM fields.
“It was an honor to help where we were needed,” said student Josh Hunsucker. “Assembling these gave us a new perspective on the importance of duplication and how each step impacts the result. We’re happy to help wherever or whenever we’re needed—it provides a learning experience for us.”
Kyra Pope summed it up: “It’s been a great amount of work over the past few months, but it pays off—especially when you’re giving back to the community.”
According to Dr. Sharon Bowers, Associate Director and Senior STEM Education Specialist for NIA-CISE, the project demonstrates what’s possible when regional partners come together to empower students and educators alike. “The financial support from COVA STEM Hub supported sustained educator professional learning within our STEM learning ecosystem. Work with the Norfolk Technical Center truly made this a real-world, problem-solving experience. This is just the beginning for more collaborative work that will bring the region together to engage educators and learners in authentic STEM learning experiences.”
This collaboration wasn’t just about building boxes to house thermometers. It was about building bridges—between technical education and science, between high school students and their futures, and between local classrooms and global research. With each shelter they crafted, the students created something that will outlast them, reminding others—and themselves—of what’s possible when learning is hands-on, meaningful, and connected to the world beyond school walls.
Thanks to Betsy McAllister, NIA’s Educator-in-Residence from Hampton City Schools, for her impactful contributions and for sharing this story. The NASA eClips project provides educators with standards-based videos, activities, and lessons to increase STEM literacy through the lens of NASA. It is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AB91A and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn
Carpentry students from the Norfolk Technical Center install a digital, multi-day, minimum/maximum thermometer in the GLOBE instrument shelter. Share
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Last Updated Apr 17, 2025 Editor NASA Science Editorial Team Location NASA Langley Research Center Related Terms
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Each year, cutting-edge technologies developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) for its complex missions and scientific discoveries find new life in applications used to benefit Earth and improve our daily lives.
From 9–13 April, ESA was guest of honour at the 50th International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva in Switzerland with more than 1000 inventions, which attracted 30 000 visitors from the public. ESA showcased its new technologies and applications that have been invented for space missions and patented for use in and outside the space arena.
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