NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft Images Asteroid Donaldjohanson - NASA Science
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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

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.

  • SpecialSetOfSieves@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    17 days ago

    Always so strange and wonderful to see how these objects, entirely free of atmosphere or storm, can have such a “soft” look - with craters seemingly buried under a layer of snow or paste, or something. I wonder if that would be that be due to the phenomenon of regolith moving via “seismic shaking”, which is supposed to partially bury smaller features in these asteroid landscapes. Even these preliminary images have enough detail and apparent features to beguile the eye.

    DJ definitely doesn’t appear as “soft” as Deimos or Atlas (out by Saturn), but those two moons are quite a bit larger than this inner main belt asteroid. A lovely reminder that there’s a lot to see in the Belt.

  • altphoto@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    17 days ago

    If my logical thinking serves me well, there’s no chance to survive interstellar travel. Look at thar thing! Its full of craters. It’s been bombarded by tiny super fast collisions. How can anything survived that in space and keep people alive too?

      • altphoto@lemmy.todayEnglish
        01·
        16 days ago

        How many years did you think it would take us to get to a habitable planet?

        The ship would be a living ship for a long long time. The space station already has been hit by micro meteors. Imagine what would happen to a larger ship away from the protection of the earth.