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EI2GYB > ASTRO 16.10.21 12:06l 88 Lines 5663 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: NASA's Lucy mission set to blast off tonight
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NASA's Lucy mission set to blast off tonight to explore mysterious Trojan asteroids near Jupiter
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds was a trippy hit for The Beatles.
Now NASA is about to send a new Lucy on a looping journey through the Solar System to reveal the secrets of Trojan rocks.
Named after heroes in Greek mythology, these small asteroids have been trapped in a celestial dance with Jupiter for an eternity.
Lucy, which is planned to blast off around 8:35pm AEDT tonight, will spend the next 12 years travelling through space to reach them.
The Lucy mission will provide an unparalleled glimpse into how our Solar System formed, said Cathy Olkin, from the Southwest Research Institute and the mission's deputy principal.
Its goal is to catch up with eight asteroids, the most objects ever visited by a spacecraft in a single mission.
"Lucy's ability to fly by so many targets means that we will not only get the first up-close look at this unexplored population, but we will also be able to study why these asteroids appear so different," Dr Olkin said in a statement.
What are Trojans?
Trojans are swarms of space rocks that orbit many large planets in our Solar System.
And it's their orbit that makes these weird rocks interesting, said Gretchen Benedix, a planetary scientist at Curtin University not involved with the mission.
The rocks are grouped together at two points - known as Lagrange points - where the gravity of the planet cancels out the gravity of the Sun.
Because these points are so stable, these rocks have been trapped in the place around the planet for billions of years.
"It means there's not too much that's going to change them, which means those materials are really, really primitive," Professor Benedix said.
Jupiter has the largest number of these space rocks in what's known as the L4 camp, aka "The Greeks", which runs ahead of the planet, and the L5 camp, aka "The Trojans", which trail the planet.
But no-one has a clear idea about what they are, because they only appear as specks of light on the most powerful telescopes from space or on Earth.
What is Lucy?
The mission is named Lucy after the fossil of an ancient human ancestor that transformed our understanding of human evolution. The skeleton, dubbed "Lucy", was named after The Beatles' song.
About the length of a bus with two 6-metre solar panels on each side, the Lucy spacecraft will fly close to seven Trojans, as well as an asteroid in the "main belt", which circles the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.
As it flies past, it will use three surface-imaging tools to work out each asteroid's temperature, size, shape, colour and composition.
A camera known as L'LORRI will take high-definition black-and-white images of craters and look for signs of rings around each space rock.
Temperature measurements from a tool known as L'TES will help scientists work out how much dust is on each asteroid's surface, a sign of when it first formed.
And L'RALPH will take images in colour as well as look for signs of ice and different types of minerals on each asteroid.
Lucy also has an antenna to communicate with Earth and do an experiment to help determine the mass of each asteroid. The signals will take up to an hour to reach us when the spacecraft is out beyond Jupiter.
And finally, Lucy will use a set of cameras to take wide-angle shots of the asteroids to get an idea of their shape, and perhaps even discover new asteroids.
What can Trojans tell us about our Solar System?
Trojans provide a snapshot of what was happening around 4.6 billion years ago when our Solar System was literally a hot mess of swirling gas and dust.
They are thought to be made from the same material that coalesced to form the planets.
There is an idea that Jupiter formed very quickly and may have been pulled in much closer to the Sun than it is today, Professor Benedix said.
"There would have been a huge amount of material just hanging out and trying to [form] into the planets as the Solar System was spinning around," she explained.
The Trojans may be the leftovers from this process swept up into Jupiter's orbit.
"Maybe the material was just there and then when Jupiter got back to where it is now there was this nice gravitational stability that let them stay there."
Professor Benedix said getting up close and personal with these asteroids could help us understand why Earth looks the way it does.
"We can do that by looking at these other places because they give us a glimpse into history that we don't have on Earth," she said.
"A lot of what we know comes from meteorites that we have, but the fact we can now send spacecraft to look at different asteroids has just increased our knowledge in volumes.
"Anything that comes out of this mission is going to be extraordinarily exciting."
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