NASA's Lucy spacecraft has arrived at the asteroid Donaldjohanson. This Lucy spacecraft has begun to send images taken during its approach flight. It has reached 960 km from the asteroid. The images are from April 20. They still have to process and download two pieces of data. In fact, what NASA said in the statement is that in the next few weeks they will still have to download information and more images.
Surely in these weeks we will have more images, this is the first thing that the Lucy ship has sent, this asteroid has a history and is very curious because it turns out that it is only 150 million years old, 150 million years is a lot of years for a human, but for an asteroid it is nothing, also in the analyzes they have discovered that the asteroid is much larger than initially thought.
Previously it was believed to be about 5 km long, now the current calculations are that it is approximately 8 km long and 3.5 km wide, the asteroid is composed of silicate rocks, silicate rocks are also those we find on Earth, they are the typical rocks, but perhaps they could also contain clay and organic matter.
This asteroid Donald Johanson is part of the family of Erigone asteroids named after Erigone, which is the largest of the family, which is a true floating island. This asteroid is a giant asteroid with an estimated size of 73 km and it is believed that both Erigone and Donaldjohanson, like all the rest of the asteroids in the family, both the large ones and the thousands of smaller remains, are the fragments of a much larger asteroid that disintegrated some time ago. 170 to 150 million years.
Large asteroids can have a complex geology and apparently this asteroid Donaldjohanson also inherited that complex geology, the researchers are quite amazed about this asteroid and how it is formed, it is believed that there must be at least two large nuclei that merged forming this structure, it is elongated because in reality they must
be two groups, one larger and one smaller that merged at low speed.
Does it have anything to do with the asteroid that 66 million years ago put an end to the era of non-avian dinosaurs and giant reptiles? That asteroid is estimated to be between 10 and 15 km wide and impacted the north of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and the cataclysm that it triggered exterminated 75% of the non-avian dinosaur species on the planet.
But no, the point is that the Yucatam asteroid did not come from this event that gave rise to the Donaldjohanson asteroid and all the rest, that asteroid also has its history, the giant asteroid that was destroyed forming this asteroid and others was between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter, the asteroid belt, but that of the dinosaurs came from further away, it is known from a
which was published last year that had to form beyond the orbit of Jupiter.
Astrogeology is a bit like gastronomy or cooking, near the sun it is hot, it is like being in an oven and the further away from the heat of the sun it becomes colder and you feel like you are in a refrigerator, especially if you go beyond Jupiter, this causes that at different distances from the Sun different substances originate depending on the heat they receive, they are more or less cooked, by analyzing the remains that have remained from that asteroid that impacted in Yucatan you can know how far from the Sun they are. formed those compounds and have deduced that this asteroid was formed beyond the orbit of Jupiter, cosmic culinary science.
Now the question is why an asteroid that was orbiting the sun so far beyond Jupiter one day changes its path and rushes towards Earth, that is something we do not know yet, it is a mystery that must be solved, perhaps it is also the fragment of another larger object that was possibly destroyed by the impact of a comet, but we still do not have enough clues to confirm that hypothesis.
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Wonderful piece on asteroid Donaldjohanson, I was unaware that the Lucy spacecraft was finally getting that close, hopefully the rest of the images will be downloaded without any issue for us all to review soon.
An 8km long Asteroid, that’s fascinating, regarding organic matter, i have speculated for some time the first confirmation of mainline "extra-terrestrial" life will probably be in microbial form as found on, or specifically inside asteroids, we may find them from samples in the short term, but undoubtedly will absolutely find such microbial life when asteroid mining becomes "a thing"
At only 170 to 150 million years old, can’t wait to see what else we learn once the data has been analysed, please keep us updated!
Wonderful writing :)
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