Home Tech News The Lucy probe will study this space rock

The Lucy probe will study this space rock

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NASA’s Lucy spacecraft continues to travel in space in search of Trojan asteroids to study their bodies and compositions during the next decade. This probe has the objective of analyzing five space rocks of this type, taking into account that they are both in the front and rear of Jupiter because they orbit around this planet. In November 2021, the ship adjusted its trajectory to be headed towards a close match with the small Dinkinesh asteroid and, It is expected that on April 20, the Lucy probe will meet the asteroid DonaldjoHanson.

This next approach will occur this Sunday, April 20 at 7:51 p.m. Peninsular Spanish, at a distance of 960 kilometers, As details NASA in its official blog. Half an hour before the approach, Lucy will be oriented to track the asteroid, during which its high gain antenna will move away from the earth, suspending communication; In addition, guided by its terminal monitoring system, the ship will make a complex observation sequence Thanks to three scientific instruments – concluded, the generator of high -resolution gray -gray images L’Lorri, the color image generator and infrared spectrometer L’Ralph, and the distant infrared spectrometer L’es.

However, unlike Dinkinesh, Lucy will stop tracking DonaldjoHanson 40 seconds before the closest approach to protect your sensitive instruments from intense sunlight. The reason? Michael Vincent, leader of the meeting phase, explains in the NASA blog that “the instruments are designed to photograph objects illuminated by a sunlight 25 times more dim than that of the Earth, so that Looking to the sun could damage the cameras

Subsequently, once the approach is over, Lucy “will back down” to reorienting his solar panels towards the sun and, approximately an hour later, will restore communication with the earth. In addition, once Lucy status is confirmed, engineers will order that Transmit the scientific data of the meeting To our planet, a process that will take several days.

On the other hand, regardless of the approach, it is important to mention that the Lucy ship studies the asteroid DonaldjoHanson because it is a fragment of a collision of 150 million years ago, which makes it one of the youngest rocky rock bodies in the main belt ever visited by a spacecraft.


What is NASA’s Lucy mission

Lucy is the first space mission exploring Jupiter’s Trojan asteroidsa diverse population of small celestial bodies.

Throughout his twelve missionwill study a record number of asteroids: it will fly over three in the asteroid belt that orbit the sun among the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and then eight Trojans, which include five target asteroids and the satellites of three of them. In addition, the earth will fly over three times to drive thanks to its seriousness, becoming the first spacecraft to return to the vicinity of our planet from the external solar system.

Lucy launched on October 16, 2021 and It is expected that on March 3, 2033 you will complete its latest approach With a Trojan asteroid. After the end of his mission, Lucy will continue in a stable orbit, traveling from an orbit close to the earth to the Trojan swarms. Besides, According to NASA“The team has carefully designed the trajectory to guarantee that Lucy does not impact the earth nor contaminate any place that could house life indications for more than 100,000 years. “


On the left, Jared Isaacman. To the right, recreation of China on the moon.

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