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A new milestone in the exploration of outer space. NASA has shared images of the progress of one of its most important missions, managing to capture the movement of one of the asteroids closest to Earth.
It has recently been possible to the immense size of the asteroid Donaldjohansen. Images have been taken by NASA's Lucy Mission and reveal both the shape and size of this space colossus.
In fact, something that speaks to its large size is that it has not even been fully captured, but nevertheless, official estimates suggest that it is a body about 11 km long and 3.5 km wide.
This asteroid is located in the region between Mars and Jupiter where most of the asteroids in the solar system orbit, and was named in honor of the famous paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, who discovered in 1974 the fossil of "Lucy" (Australopithecus afarensis), one of the most important finds for understanding human evolution.
Lucy mission 960 kilometers from asteroid DonaldJohansen
This finding is of great importance, since since 2021, when the Lucy mission was launched, this is the sharpest image of one of the main objects of this mission. It should be ed that the Lucy mission is focused on the study of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids, but before that it made a to contemplate the asteroid DonaldJohansen.
This encounter is a rehearsal for the contemplation of the mentioned Trojan asteroids, and was carried out at a distance of less than 960 kilometers. Its antenna stopped pointing towards the Earth to point towards the asteroid, having to cut off communication with the asteroid 40 seconds before to prevent the instruments from being affected by sunlight.