NASA Lucy Spaceship This weekend, we will be heading past a small asteroid as we will continue our path to even bigger prizes: Unexplored: A flock of asteroids near Jupiter.

That’s probably The second asteroid encounter It was released for Lucy in 2021 as Quest to turn 11 Space Lock. A close approach should help scientists better understand the early solar system when planets are forming. The asteroid is Ancient leftovers.

The upcoming flyby is a 2027 dress rehearsal in which Lucy reached the first so-called Trojan asteroid near Jupiter.

Sunday’s spacecraft, making three scientific instruments, observes a harmless asteroid known as Donald Johansson. The encounter takes place 139 million miles (223 million kilometers) from Earth, the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

A paleontologist named Lockheed Martin, the asteroid, the architect and operator of the spacecraft, is in mission control for all actions. He discovered Ethiopian fossil Lucy 50 years ago. The spaceship is named after a famous human ancestor.

NASA’s Lucy approaches 596 miles (960 kilometers) to this asteroid, an estimated 2½ miles (4 kilometers), but much shorter in width. Scientists should consider their size and shape better after a short visit. The spacecraft zooms at over 30,000 mph (48,000 kph).

The asteroid is one of countless fragments believed to have arisen from a massive collision 150 million years ago.

“It’s not going to be a basic potato. We already know that,” said Hal Levison, chief scientist at the South West Research Institute.

Rather, Levison said the asteroid could resemble bowling pins and snowmen like Arocos, the Kuiper Belt object that NASA’s New Horizon spacecraft visits in 2019. Another possibility is that two elongated but separate asteroids are far apart.

“We don’t know what to expect, and that’s what makes this so cool,” he said.

There is no communication with Lucy during the flyby as the spacecraft is keeping its antenna away from Earth to track the asteroid. Levison expects to have most of the scientific data within a day.

Lucy’s next stop, “Main Event,” is a Trojan asteroid that, as Levison calls it, shares Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun. A herd of Trojans preceded the largest planet in the solar system, circles the sun. Lucy visited eight people from 2027 to 2033, some of which will be paired with two.

Lucy’s first asteroid flyby came in 2023 as she passed Little Dinkinesh, located in the main asteroid belt. The spaceship discovered a mini-moon around it.