NASA Lucy reveals wobbling asteroid Donaldjohanson (opens in new tab)

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft found that the inner main-belt asteroid Donaldjohanson has a wobbling, two-axis rotation rather than a simple spin, according to findings published June 18 in Science. The asteroid rotates end over end once every 10.5 Earth days while wobbling around its horizontal axis every 26.5 days. Lucy collected close-up images and data during an April 20, 2025, flyby, passing within about 650 miles, or 1,000 kilometers, of the roughly 5-mile, or 8-kilometer, asteroid in the main ...