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NASA’s Lucy Mission to Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroids: All you need to know 

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NASA’s Lucy Mission to Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroids: All you need to know 

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NASA’s Lucy Mission would be launched on October 16, 2021. It would be sent on a 12 year journey to the Planet Jupiter. The mission of the spacecraft would be to study the Trojan Asteroid for initial life traces on Earth. Take a look at the details of this mission here. 

It would be NASA’s longest mission so far. 

Lucy: About the Mission-

  1. NASA’s Lucy mission would include three Earth gravity assists and visits to eight asteroids called Jupiter’s Trojan.
  2. Lucy would take off from the Earth on October 16 aboard the Atlas V 401 rocket. The lift off would take place at 3:04 pm IST. The viewers who wish to watch the take off can watch it through the link shared by NASA. 
  3. The mission was conceived seven years ago as a mission to two asteroids. However, it was expanded to many proportions, now that it would be covering seven asteroids. 

How did the Mission come to its latest form?

  1. Longtime mission trajectory designer Brian Sutter from Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, was walking Levison through a computer simulation of Lucy’s proposed route through the solar system.
  2. He realised that Lucy would be passing through Patroclus on its trajectory. It is one of the pairs of the Trojan Asteroids that orbit each other. Patroclus is locked with Menoetius which is its near twin partner. It is a rare and mysterious breed inside the orbit of Neptune. 
  3. Most asteroids lost their turbulent partners during the turbulent planet formation period due to collisions but this very pair remained intact. This mystery could be solved and lead mankind to a solution of the mystery of life’s beginning as well. 
  4. Sutter who has been the designer of Lucy’s trajectory also noticed then it would be passing closely to the pair of asteroids.As it happened, Lucy and the Patroclus-Menoetius pair crossed paths in 2033. “It was just luck,” Levison said.
  5. This inspired Sutter to feed 750000 known asteroids into the path of Lucy during the mission timeframe along with Lucy’s trajectory details and came up with the asteroids now that are planned in the route. 
  6. Lucy would first fly by Earth twice to use this planet’s gravity to hurl itself toward the Trojans. 
  7. In 2025, it would fly past Donaldjohanson orbiting in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. 
  8. This flyby would be used by the team to test the spacecraft’s instruments.
  9. By August 2027, Lucy would reach its first swarm of Trojans preceding Jupiter at a gravitationally stable location called the Lagrange point or L4.
  10. Lucy would then swing back to Earth again in September for a third gravity assist and go to the other side of Jupiter for studying Patroclus and Menoetius in 2033.

Trojan Asteroids: About- 

These asteroids are named after Greek mythology and are left overs of the formation of the Solar System. 

Trojans encircle the Sun in two swarms: 

  1. One that precedes Jupiter in its orbit of the Sun.
  2. One that follows Jupiter in its orbit of the Sun. 

Lucy would be the first spacecraft to visit the Trojans and the first to examine so many independent solar system targets, each in its own orbit of the Sun.

Trojans are various clusters of rocks, snow and ice that could not coalesce into planets while the solar system was formed. They include the best evidence one can find from that period and thus can explain the solar system better than any other. 

“When we look back on the solar system and our place here on Earth, people often ask, ‘What is our history? How did we get here?’”, asks Cathy Olkin who is Lucy’s deputy principal investigator. “Lucy would give us all the answers”, she added. 

How did Lucy get its name?

Lucy is named after fossilized human ancestor, “Lucy” who was named so by her discoverers. Her skeleton was found to provide unique insight into human evolution. In a similar way Lucy would revolutionise the knowledge of planetary origins and the formation of the solar system. 

Also Read| NASA’s Landsat 9- An eye from above monitoring the changes on Earth- All you need to know

Hubble Telescope: Discoveries, Features, How to visit & What NASA’s Hubble is watching Live in space?



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