Learn more about the Lucy mission "fly past 52246 Donaldjohanson -NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Dan Gallagher: Producer/Narrator Adriana Manrique Gutierrez: Animator Kel Elkins: Animator Johathan North: Animator Michael Lentz: Animator/Art Director Walt Feimer: Animation Lead Nancy Jones: Public Affairs Katherine Kretke: Public Affairs
Universal Production Music: “Nico’s Journey” by Nicholas Smith [PRS]; “Knowing Half the Future” and “Temporal Timings” by Lee John Gretton [PRS]; “Poly Propulsion” by Alfie Solo [PRS]
00:00About 150 million years ago, Earth's most recent supercontinent was in the process of breaking up.
00:07Sauropods dominated the lush, slowly separating landmass that would become today's familiar continents.
00:14Meanwhile, in the asteroid belt, a breakup of a different sort was taking place.
00:19The large asteroid 163 Origini was pummeled in a collision, shedding debris to form a new family of asteroids.
00:27Fast forward to 3.2 million years ago, long after the fall of the dinosaurs, when an early hominin walked upright through an Ethiopian river valley.
00:37Now, a robotic explorer, named for our most famous human ancestor, is heading to a member of the Origini asteroid family, en route to the fossils of planetary formation.
00:48Liftoff. Atlas V takes flight.
00:52NASA's Lucy mission launched in October 2021 and flew past Earth in 2022 and 2024 for a pair of gravity assists.
01:01In early 2025, Lucy entered the main asteroid belt, on course for humanity's first encounter with 52246 Donald Johansson.
01:11The asteroid was named in honor of the paleoanthropologist who discovered the Lucy fossil in 1974, rewriting the textbooks on human origins.
01:20While asteroid Donald Johansson has never been seen up close, its brightness varies greatly as it rotates, suggesting an elongated shape.
01:28It is a member of the Origini family of asteroids, made from fragments of the collision that took place about 150 million years ago.
01:36Earth-based observations suggest that Donald Johansson is carbon-rich, has an average diameter of about 4 km, and spins on its axis extremely slowly, giving it a 251-hour day.
01:52On Sunday, April 20th, Lucy will approach Donald Johansson from the direction of the Sun, traveling 13.4 km per second relative to the asteroid.
02:02As its target grows near, the spacecraft will slowly rotate, keeping the asteroid in view.
02:08Over the course of a few hours, Donald Johansson will transform, from a point of light, into a detailed world.
02:15Lucy's long-range reconnaissance imager will capture high-resolution pictures throughout the flyby, providing our best look yet at the asteroid.
02:24Just before closest approach, when Lucy is about 900 km from its target,
02:29it will abruptly turn its instrument-pointing platform away from the Sun to protect its sensitive electronics.
02:35Shortly after the flyby, Lucy will perform a pitch-back maneuver, changing the direction of its rotation to turn its high-gain antenna toward Earth.
02:43Two hours later, data from Lucy will deliver the first close-up views of Donald Johansson, a surviving remnant of the Solar System's chaotic past.
02:52Following the flyby, Lucy will continue to pass through the main asteroid belt.
02:59In August 2027, it will reach Euribides, an asteroid more than ten times larger than Donald Johansson and a member of the Jupiter Trojans.
03:08These primordial and primitive objects are trapped in Jupiter's orbit and are considered the fossils of planetary formation.
03:15Between 2027 and 2033, Lucy will make five separate encounters with Trojan asteroids and their moons.
03:23It will become the first spacecraft to explore this ancient population,
03:27asteroids more than 1,000 times older than our most famous human ancestor,
03:32formed at the dawn of the Solar System, long before dinosaurs ruled the Earth.
