Jupiter Trojan asteroids: NASA’s Lucy mission is set to be launched this week and the scientific neighborhood is excited as this would mark the 1st spacecraft to discover the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. It is believed that the asteroids are remnants of the early solar technique. Scientists are of the view that studying these asteroids could aid in understanding the origin and evolution of the solar technique and the cause behind it getting taken its existing type and shape. It is estimated that the mission, which will be powered by solar power, will run for 12 years and through this time, it would stop by eight asteroids spread more than a distance of a whopping 6.3 billion kilometers.
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Why did NASA name the mission Lucy?
According to the US Space Agency, the mission has been named soon after ‘Lucy’, the fossilised human ancestor. The 3.2 million-year-old skeleton had let scientists get special insights into the evolution of humanity. NASA believes that equivalent insights would be supplied about the formation of the solar technique and the origin of the planets by this mission, and therefore it has been named Lucy.
Lucy’s launch and other mission particulars
Lucy is set to be launched on October 16, ie, the coming Saturday, and it will take off from Florida-based Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. An Atlas V 401 rocket would carry the spacecraft to space, exactly where it would fly by the Earth twice to use the planet’s gravitational field as leverage for the next leg of its journey towards the asteroids.
The 1st asteroid that the mission would encounter would be in the key asteroid belt discovered in between Mars and Jupiter, and then it would encounter seven Trojan asteroids. Trojan asteroids are these that share an orbit with a bigger planet, which indicates that they are not a component of the key asteroid belt in the solar technique. In our solar technique, NASA has reported that Jupiter, Mars and Neptune Trojan asteroids exist, and an Earth Trojan was also reported in 2011. Seven of these Jupiter Trojan asteroids would be studied by Mission Lucy.
During the mission, Lucy would come back to the Earth thrice to take help from the planet’s gravitational field, and this would make it the 1st-ever spacecraft to return to Earth’s vicinity from the outer solar technique, NASA stated.