October 17, 2021 US launches ‘Lucy’ mission to explore asteroids near Jupiter
Investigation of the origin and evolution of planets in the solar system for 12 years

China launches manned spacecraft ‘Shenzhou 13’
Stay for 6 months to support the construction of the space station ‘Tiangong’

The United States and China are competing to expand their influence in space, such as launching spacecraft on the same day.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) carried the asteroid probe ‘Lucy’ into space on the Atlas 5 rocket from the 41st space launch site at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base, Florida at 6:34 pm on the 16th (Korean time). blown away

Lucy embarks on a 12-year expedition to explore all eight asteroids. In April 2025, after carrying out the first mission by passing an asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, in August 2027, it will be the first time for mankind to explore 7 Trojan asteroids orbiting the same as Jupiter.

In the course of flying to an asteroid, it will come to Earth three times and perform a gravity-assisted flight that accelerates using the Earth’s gravity.

The Trojan asteroids that Lucy will explore are presumed to be leftovers from the formation of exoplanets such as Jupiter and Saturn, and are estimated to be in a primitive state that has hardly changed over the past 4.5 billion years.

The asteroid probe Lucy. Shinhwa Yonhap News

There are about 10,000 Trojan asteroids, the sun and Jupiter form an equilateral triangle, and are caught at the Lagrange points (L4, L5) where gravity becomes 0, and orbits the sun in front of and behind Jupiter.

Lucy approaches these asteroids to about 400 km and flies at a speed of 5 to 9 km per second, and uses telemetry equipment to obtain data on the asteroid’s constituent materials, mass, density, and size.

Considering this, Lucy’s mission period is 12 years in total, but it is said that the actual time to explore the asteroid is only 24 hours.

Lucy is named after a 3.2 million-year-old fossil Australopithecus afarensis discovered in Ethiopia, Africa in 1974.

When excavating fossils, he heard a lot of the Beatles song ‘Lucy in the sky with Diamonds’, which was popular at the time, and named it. Like Lucy, it has the meaning of making an important contribution to elucidating the origin and evolution of planets in the solar system.

The Chinese manned spacecraft Shenzhou 13 is launched from the Zhuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu Province, northwest China, on the 16th. Shinhwa Yonhap News

In two days, China launched a spacecraft carrying a solar probe and astronauts to stay on the space station.

The manned spacecraft ‘Shenzhou 13’, which will support the construction of China’s independent space station, Tiangong, was launched at ‘Changjing-2F Yao’ at 0:23 on the 16th (1:23 am Korean time on the 16th) at the Zhuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu Province, northwestern China. -13′ rocket was launched.

China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced that Shenzhou 13 successfully docked with ‘Tianhe’, the core module of the space station, around 6:56 a.m. on the same day.

From left, Ye Guangfu (41), Wang Yaping (41) and Zhijiang (55) wave their hands just before boarding Shenzhou No. 13. AFP Yonhap News

Three people aboard Shenzhou 13, including the captain, Zhijigang (55), Wang Yaping (41), and Ye Guangpu (41).

After docking with the space station’s core module ‘Tianhe’, the three astronauts stay in space for six months to perform core technology tests for the assembling and construction of Tiangong, installation of various devices necessary for Tiangong construction, and scientific experiments. Six months is the longest continuous space stay in China’s space mission, Chinese media reported.

Wang Yaping will be registered as the first Chinese female astronaut to perform activities outside the spacecraft by visiting the Chinese space station currently under construction.

Shenzhou 12, carrying three astronauts earlier, was launched on June 17 and entered Tianhe on the same day. They returned to Earth on the 17th of last month after a 90-day mission in Tianhe.

The space station Tiangong, under construction by China, is 37 meters long and weighs 90 tons, which is one-third the size of the International Space Station (ISS) jointly operated by the United States and Russia.

To build its own space station, Tiangong, China plans to launch additional cargo ships and manned spacecraft to complete the construction of Tiangong by the end of next year.

In addition, China’s first solar exploration satellite ‘Liheho’ was launched at 6:51 pm on the 14th at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shaanxi Province on a Changjeong-2D rocket.

Chinese media reported that the satellite is equipped with the world’s first H-alpha frequency image spectrometer.

Through this, changes in physical quantities such as atmospheric temperature and velocity during a solar explosion can be identified, which is expected to provide important data for studying the dynamic process and physical mechanism of a solar explosion.

This is a picture captured on the screen of the Beijing Space Control Center (BACC) on the 16th, showing three crew members of the Chinese manned spacecraft ‘Shenzhou 13’ waving after entering ‘Tianhe’, the core module of the space station. Shinhwa Yonhap News

In recent years, China has been accelerating its ‘space expansion’ by advancing lunar, Mars, and solar exploration projects one after another.

On May 15th, China’s first Mars unmanned probe, Tianyuan-1, safely passed the last ‘Nine Minutes of Fear’, the most difficult, and landed safely in the southern part of the Utopia Plain, the largest plain on Hwaseong, where it was scheduled to land. With the successful landing of Tianyuan-1, China became the third country on Earth to land a rover on Mars, after the United States and the former Soviet Union.

After the landing of Tianyuan-1, the rover ‘Kowloon’ stepped on the surface of Mars, completing a three-month exploration mission. Moving 889m, 10GB of raw data on Martian soil, moisture, and geological characteristics were collected.

China landed the first human probe, Chang’e 4, on the far side of the moon in 2019. In 2024, there is also a plan to launch the Chang’e 6 probe, which will return to collect samples from the far side of the moon.

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