NASA 's Lucy spacecraft is making its first flyby of the asteroid Dinkinesh today, marking the start of the spacecraft 's 12-year journey to different asteroids.
The Lucy spacecraft will be the first to investigate Trojan asteroids — asteroids that follow Jupiter's orbit around the sun and are thought to be remnants of solar system, made from material left over from the formation of the planets. So these asteroids are likely at least 4.6 billion years old. That means analyzing the composition of these asteroids could tell us what elements were present when Earth was forming.
The Lucy spacecraft has been preparing for its visit to Dinkinesh since September. However, today, November 1, is the first close look at the space rock.
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"This is the first time Lucy will look closely at an object that, up until this point, looked like a smudge in the best telescopes," said Lucy mission principal investigator and Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) researcher Hal Levison. "Dinkinesh is about to be revealed to humanity for the first time."
The Lucy spacecraft launched at 5:34 a.m. EDT (0934 GMT) on October 16, 2021, from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The spacecraft then returned to Earth for a gravity assist a year later, on October 16, 2022. Passing 350 kilometers above Earth's surface, Lucy rocketed toward the main asteroid belt about 480 million kilometers away.
During today's flyby, Lucy will get quite close to the asteroid Dinkinesh, coming within 430 kilometers of the space rock's surface.
With this flyby, the spacecraft will test its equipment before traveling to other asteroids. The monitoring mission begins with remote monitoring. About 8 minutes before close approach, the spacecraft will collect data on Dinkinesh with the color imager and infrared spectrometer. Once it gets close enough to the asteroid, it will begin collecting data with the high-resolution imager (L'LORRI) and the thermal infrared imager (L'TES). This continuous imaging and monitoring of Dinkinesh will continue for nearly an hour.
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Scientists will monitor the activity of the Lucy spacecraft but it takes about 30 minutes for signals to travel between the spacecraft and Earth.
After Lucy reorients and resumes communications with Earth, the spacecraft will continue to image Dinkinesh for the next four days.
After this important test of Lucy's instruments, the spacecraft will return to Earth in December 2024. The new boost will send it back to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, leading to the second flyby scheduled for April 20, 2025.
After that, Lucy will finally zoom in on the two trojan clusters that are in Jupiter.
For the next ten years, Lucy flights to other trojan asteroids are planned for close observation.
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NASA's Lucy mission is contributing to our understanding of our world through the exploration and study of asteroids. Its flybys of asteroids will provide a unique opportunity to study the composition, structure, and history of these objects. This information helps us better understand the formation and evolution of solar system and provides clues about the conditions that existed during its formation. It can help us reconstruct the evolution of our solar system.
In addition, the Lucy mission allows us to study the influence of asteroids on the evolution of planets. Collisions between asteroids and planets can have significant effects on the morphology and atmosphere of planets.
Source: www.space.com
