'Right now, we are in what has to be a Golden Age of asteroid exploration.' Scientists celebrate NASA's latest space rock flyby

An artist's depiction of the Lucy spacecraft flying past a pair of Trojan asteroids.

BOULDER, Colorado — Asteroid experts are pondering the scientific output from the NASA Lucy spacecraft after it shot by its celestial destination — the main belt asteroid named Donaldjohanson.

Here at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), lead organization for the Lucy mission, Hal Levison, principal investigator of the Lucy mission, said the spacecraft flyby of Donaldjohanson yielded a host of "don't know" factors about the object.