NASA’s Mission Lucy confirmed its spacecraft successfully completed a flyby of asteroid Dinkinesh, a relatively small space rock located in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter. This marks a milestone in Lucy’s journey, as Dinkinesh, or ‘Dinky,’ is the first of 10 asteroids the probe will visit over the next 12 years.
Key Points of Mission Lucy
- As the spacecraft flew by asteroid Dinikesh, it made a stunning discovery. The asteroid was not alone.
- The flyby revealed that the small main belt asteroid Dinkinesh is actually a binary pair. This unexpected finding has added a new dimension to the mission, which was initially planned to fly by seven asteroids.
- The name “Dinkinesh,” meaning “marvelous” in the Amharic language, was aptly chosen for this asteroid.
- NASA’s Lucy mission is the first spacecraft launched to explore the Trojan asteroids, a population of primitive asteroids orbiting in tandem with Jupiter.
- Lucy was successfully launched Oct. 16, 2021
Mission Lucy’s Objectives
Mission Lucy is solar-powered and is expected to span over 12 years. The spacecraft will travel approximately 6.3 billion kilometers to visit a series of asteroids in the Trojan and asteroid belt regions. The mission aims to:
- Study the composition of these asteroids to learn about the early solar system.
- Investigate the mass, density, and geology of the asteroids, including looking for potential moons or rings that may surround them.
The Naming of Mission Lucy
The name “Lucy” for the spacecraft is inspired by one of the most famous hominin fossils ever discovered. In 1974, paleoanthropologists unearthed the nearly complete skeleton of a hominin, which they named Lucy, after the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” which played at their camp that night. This fossil, dated to be 3.2 million years old, provided a crucial piece of the puzzle in understanding human evolution. Just as the fossil provided new insights into human history, Mission Lucy aims to provide valuable knowledge about the origins of the solar system.
Mission Lucy’s Scientific Tools
Lucy is equipped with cutting-edge technology to explore the asteroids it encounters:
- The Lucy spacecraft will perform flybys of its target asteroids at distances as close as 250 miles (400 kilometers) from their surfaces.
- It will use a range of scientific instruments, including the Lucy Thermal Emission Spectrometer, which detects far infrared radiation to map the temperature of asteroid surfaces. This data helps scientists learn about the physical properties of the asteroids, such as their composition and the presence of dust, sand, or rocks.
- Solar power will keep the spacecraft running for its long journey, even at distances of up to 850 million kilometers from the Sun. This makes Mission Lucy the farthest solar-powered spacecraft ever launched by NASA.
What Are Trojan Asteroids?
- Asteroids sharing an orbit with a planet, but which are located at the leading (L4) and trailing (L5) Lagrangian points, are known as Trojan asteroids.
- These asteroids occupy a stable Lagrangian point in a planet’s orbit around the Sun.
- Trojan Asteroids are some of the oldest remnants from the formation of our solar system 5 billion years ago.
- There are currently over 4,800 known Trojan asteroids associated with Jupiter.
- They orbit the Sun in two loose groups: one group leading ahead of Jupiter in its orbit, the other trailing behind at the same distance from the Sun as Jupiter.
- Due to the combined gravitational influences of the Sun and Jupiter, these Trojan asteroids have been trapped on stable orbits (around what is known as the Lagrange Points) for billions of years
Jupiter And Mission Lucy
- Fifth in line from the Sun, Jupiter is, by far, the largest planet in the solar system – more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined.
- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are called Jovian or Gas Giant Planets. These have thick atmospheres, mostly of helium and hydrogen.
- Jupiter rotates once about every 10 hours (a Jovian day), but takes about 12 Earth years to complete one orbit of the Sun (a Jovian year). Jupiter has more than 75 moons.
- The major moons of Jupiter are named Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, which are each distinctive worlds.
- In 1979, the Voyager mission discovered Jupiter’s faint ring system. Nine spacecraft have visited Jupiter. Seven flew by and two have orbited the gas giant. Juno, the most recent, arrived at Jupiter in 2016.
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