According to “The Independent” newspaper, researchers at the “Southwest Research Institute” made this discovery using NASA’s “Lucy” spacecraft, which flew near the asteroid on April 20, 2025.
Simone Marchi, deputy principal investigator of the “Lucy” mission and lead author of the study, said that the images taken by the spacecraft confirmed the elongated shape of the asteroid, which ground telescopes had previously hinted at.
He explained that the close flyby revealed that the asteroid, which has a diameter of about half a mile, resembles a peanut, as it consists of two lobes connected by a narrower region resembling a neck.
The appearance alone was not surprising. The data showed that “Donald Johansson” does not rotate stably like many space objects, but rather moves in a swaying manner, in what is scientifically known as irregular rotation around more than one axis.
Scientists also found iron-rich clay minerals, which are believed to have formed near liquid water. These signs indicate that the asteroid may be composed of the remains of a larger body rich in carbon and water, which was destroyed about 155 million years ago as a result of a collision in the main asteroid belt.
This flight carries additional importance, because it was a practical test for the “Lucy” spacecraft before its primary mission near the Trojan asteroids, which are two groups of ancient objects that move around the sun in orbit close to the planet Jupiter.
Scientists hope that studying these asteroids will help understand the early stages of the formation of the solar system, because they are among the ancient objects that have been preserved since their inception.
Markey said that passing near Donald Johansson gave the team an opportunity to test devices and procedures before arriving at the Trojan asteroids. He added that studying these objects, which differ in their history and composition from other asteroids, may prompt scientists to reconsider some ideas related to how the solar system was formed.
The results of the study were published in a scientific paper entitled “Lucy’s flyby of Donald Johansson: an asteroid with two lobes and a swaying rotation,” in the journal “Science.”
Thus, Donald Johansson does not just provide a funny picture of a peanut-like object in space, but rather gives scientists a new piece of a broader puzzle: How did planets and asteroids form, and how did some ancient bodies carry traces of water and carbon since the beginnings of the solar system?
