1. NASA Selects Lucy Mission to Study Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroids
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2. The mission is named after the iconic 'Lucy' hominin skeleton, because the study of Trojans asteroids could reveal the “fossils of planet formation.”
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3. Facts: Lucy’s launch is scheduled for October 2021.
It will flyby its targets from 2025 to 2033.
All in all Lucy will study six Trojans and one main belt asteroid.
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4. The Jupiter Trojans are a large group of asteroids that share the orbit of the planet Jupiter around the Sun.
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5. Mission Diagram:
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6. Lucy’s payload:
L’Ralph, a panchromatic and color imager and infrared spectroscopic mapper
L’LORRI, a high-resolution visible imager
L’OTES, a thermal infrared spectrometer
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7. Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroids
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11. NASA Selects Lucy Mission to Study Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroids
The Lucy spacecraft and a remote-sensing instrument suite will study the geology, surface composition, and bulk physical properties of these Trojan Asteroids at close range.
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12. The mission is named after the iconic 'Lucy' hominin skeleton, because the study of Trojans asteroids could reveal the “fossils of planet formation”—materials that clumped together in the early history of the Solar System to form planets and other bodies.
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The hominin fossil “Lucy” was named for a Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds“.
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13. Facts: Lucy’s launch is scheduled for October 2021.
It will flyby its targets from 2025 to 2033.
All in all Lucy will study six Trojans and one main belt asteroid.
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, CO is the principal investigator institution and will lead the science investigation.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD will provide overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, CO will build the spacecraft.
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14. The Jupiter Trojans are a large group of asteroids that share the orbit of the planet Jupiter around the Sun.
Relative to Jupiter, each Trojan congregates around one of Jupiter's two stable Lagrangian points, L4, lying 60° ahead of the planet in its orbit, and L5, 60° behind.
Lagrangian Points
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15. Lagrangian points are positions in an orbital configuration of two large bodies, in this case Jupiter and the Sun, where a small object affected only by gravity can maintain a stable position relative to the two large bodies.
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16. Asteroids sharing an orbit with a planet, but which are located at the leading (L4) and trailing (L5) Lagrangian points, are known as Trojan asteroids. Although Trojan asteroids have been discovered for Mars (4 to date, 1 at L4 and 3 at L5) and Neptune (8 Trojans, 6 at L4 and 2 at L5) and even Earth (1 Trojan at L4), the term ‘Trojan asteroid’ generally refers to the asteroids accompanying Jupiter.
The term ‘Trojan asteroid’ was coined when it was decided to name all asteroids discovered at the L4 and L5 points of Jupiter after warriors in the Trojan war: Greek warriors at L4 and Trojan warriors at L5.
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17. Trojans with their flyby dates and descriptions:
April 2025: Donaldjohanson, 4km diameter C-type asteroid in the inner main-belt, member of ~130Myr old Erigone family.
August 2027: Eurybates, 64km diameter C-type Jupiter Trojan in the Greek camp at L4, largest member of a the only confirmed disruptive collisional family in the Trojans.
September 2027: Polymele, 21km diameter P-type Trojan in the Greek camp at L4, likely collisional fragment.
April 2028: Leucus, 34km diameter D-type slowly rotating Trojan in the Greek camp at L4.
November 2028: Orus, 51km diameter D-type Trojan in the Greek camp at L4.
March 2033: Patroclus, P-type binary Trojan. The primary, Patroclus, has a mean diameter of 113km and the companion Menoetius has a diameter of 104 km. The pair orbit at a separation of 680 km. The binary resides in the Trojan camp at L5.
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18. Lucy’s payload:
L’Ralph, a panchromatic and color imager and infrared spectroscopic mapper from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
L’LORRI, a high-resolution visible imager from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
L’OTES, a thermal infrared spectrometer from Arizona State University
Info: photos:
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19. In addition, Lucy will perform radio science investigations using its tele- communications system to determine the masses and densities of the Trojan asteroids.
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