NASA’s Jupiter Trojan asteroid-scouting mission has been given an extra house rock to go to, bringing the journey’s whole to 10 asteroids.
The Lucy mission crew formally added main-belt asteroid 1999 VD57 to Lucy’s checklist of targets on Jan. 24. The addition will permit the spacecraft to check its modern goal monitoring system and introduce us to a different small world years earlier than Lucy reaches its main science targets within the outer photo voltaic system.
“There are thousands and thousands of asteroids in the principle asteroid belt,” Raphael Marschall, a Lucy collaborator on the Good Observatory in France, who recognized asteroid 1999 VD57 as an object of particular curiosity for Lucy, stated in a assertion. “This asteroid actually stood out. Lucy’s trajectory as initially designed will take it inside 40,000 miles of the asteroid, not less than 3 times nearer than the subsequent closest asteroid.”
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Lucy launched in October 2021 and is on a 12-year-long mission to go to two separate units of Jupiter‘s Trojan asteroids, which orbit the solar forward of and behind the enormous gasoline planet, reaching these teams in 2027 and 2033 respectively.
Asteroid 1999 VD57 is an S-type, or stony, asteroid with the provisional identify Dinkinesh, Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator and a planetary scientist on the Southwest Analysis Institute in Colorado, stated on Thursday (Jan. 26) at a presentation to NASA’s Small Our bodies Advisory Group. The asteroid was not recognized as a goal earlier as a result of this can be very small, in response to the crew, however its presence now gives the mission a helpful alternative to conduct an additional gown rehearsal for its Trojan tour.
Lucy’s authentic trajectory would have taken it inside 40,000 miles (64,400 kilometers) of the two,300-foot (700 meters) diameter asteroid, however a collection of small maneuvers starting in Could will permit the spacecraft to make a a lot nearer strategy, coming inside roughly 280 miles (450 km) on Nov. 1.
The flyby will give the crew an early alternative to check its twin Terminal Monitoring Cameras (T2CAM), which the spacecraft will primarily use to mechanically lock onto and monitor asteroids throughout flybys and ensure Lucy’s different devices are pointed in the suitable path, which has historically been tough.
“Up to now, most flyby missions have accounted for this uncertainty by taking a number of photos of the area the place the asteroid could be, which means low effectivity and many photos of clean house,” Levison stated in a assertion.
“Lucy would be the first flyby mission to make use of this modern and sophisticated system to mechanically monitor the asteroid through the encounter,” he stated. “This novel system will permit the crew to take many extra photos of the goal.”
Lucy has already imaged the moon when it made the primary of three flybys of the Earth that may allow its journey to Jupiter’s Trojans. The mission crew additionally lately introduced that they’d suspended efforts to completely deploy one of many spacecraft’s photo voltaic arrays, leaving it at 98% unfurled; the crew is assured this lacking slither won’t impression the mission, officers stated.
The mission’s first encounter with an area rock was beforehand slated to be its 2025 flyby of the principle belt asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson, named for the paleontologist who found the fossil Lucy, which in flip impressed the identify of the NASA mission.
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