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NASA is ready to ship, on Saturday morning (16), its first spacecraft destined to study the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. The mission’s goal is to gain new perspectives on the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.
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The probe, named Lucy after an ancient fossil that helped understand the evolution of the human species, will be launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
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The mission is to investigate the group of rock bodies that circle the sun in two clusters, one preceding Jupiter on its orbital path and the other following behind it.
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Analysis has shown that asteroids that follow the sun in the same orbit as Jupiter are uniformly dark with a touch of burgundy and have frosted surfaces that reflect little sunlight. — Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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After receiving impulses from Earth’s gravity, Lucy will embark on a 12-year journey to eight different asteroids: one in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter and then seven Trojans.
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“Despite the fact that they’re actually in a very small region of space, they’re very different physically from each other,” Hal Levison, the mission’s lead scientist, explained to reporters about the Trojan asteroids, which number more than 7,000 in the total.
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“For example, they have very different colors, some are gray, some are red,” he added. The differences indicate how far from the sun they may have formed before taking their current trajectory.
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“Whatever Lucy finds will give us vital clues to the formation of our solar system,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division.
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Original parts from NASA missions are exhibited for the 1st time in Brazil
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The probe will fly up to 400 kilometers from the surface of its target objects, and will use on-board instruments and large antennas to investigate their geology, including composition, mass, density and volume.
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The spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin and includes more than three kilometers of wires and solar panels that, when stacked, would have the height of a five-story building.
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It will be the first solar-powered to venture so far from the sun, and will observe more asteroids than any other spacecraft before. The total cost of the mission is 981 million dollars.
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Researchers who discovered the fossil Lucy in Ethiopia in 1974 named it after the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” who were listening loudly in the expedition’s camp.
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In honor of this heritage, NASA’s official mission logo is diamond-shaped.
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