NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft Set for High-Stakes Asteroid Encounter on Sunday

The Lucy Mission is on a 12 -year journey to explore a strange set of asteroids that lead Thursday and it orbit the sun. When it travels to these Trojan asteroids, the investigation is preparing for the second stop at the original belt, a mysterious place for practice for the original event has reached the rock.

The NASA Lucy Spaceground will operate a flybi on the small main belt donaldzohanson on April 20 1:51 pm, when it will come in a distance of 596 miles (960 km) from the target. It is Lucy’s second facing with an asteroid, but it is much more complicated than its first flybie, NASA describes it as “a broad clothing rehearsal for Lucy’s original mission”, the Space Agency wrote in one News releaseThe

Lucy is first The robotic eyes on the Donaldzohanson in February had its robotic eyes And the asteroid has been tracking asteroids for the past two months to prepare for its flying. Donaldzohanson, named after the invention of lucy hominid fossil, is a carbnesius asteroid that is about 2.5 miles (4 km) wide. The asteroid is a section of a collision that took place about a million years ago, it made it one of the youngest main belts visited by the spacecraft.

Although it is not a Trojan asteroid, it is located in a convenient place for Lucy to move on to the Jovian system. The upcoming Flybie team will give the team the opportunity to test Lucy’s systems and run observations using three science materials in the spacecraft.

The spacecraft will orient to track the asteroid about 30 minutes before its close procedure. At that time, Lucy’s high-furnished antenna, which it used to contact ground control, would suspend communication and move away from the earth. For the rest of the flybie, autonomously rotated using its terminal tracking system autonomously to visit Lucy Donaldzohanson. Lucy will then use its science instruments to handle the asteroid observation sequences that are very similar to the fact that they will perform it after reaching the Trojans.

About 40 seconds before its nearest method in the asteroid, however, Lucy will stop tracking Donaldzohanans to protect its sensitive instruments from intense sunlight. “If you sit near the Lucy spacecraft, you have to look at the LUC statement waiting to rise from Lucy.” These instruments are designed to photograph the sun 25 times by the earth, so looking at the sun can damage our cameras. “

After the closest approach, the spacecraft will rebuild its solar arrays back to the sun. It will reproduce the Earth’s contact with the Earth about an hour after the flybay, hopefully it will return all the valuable data collected. The team, however, has to be patient, considering how far Lucy is from the earth, so the process will take several days.

Vincent said, “One of the weirdest things to engage your brain with these deep space missions is how slow the speed of light.” “Lucy takes 12.5 minutes away from the Earth, which means that we send any signal to reach the spacecraft for a long time then we take 12.5 minutes before Lucy’s reaction. So, when we command the data playback after the nearest procedure, we take 25 minutes before any of their soil.”

Lucy was launched in October 2021, and in November 2021, the small belt asteroid dragged a flybike in Dinknesh. Mission’s first asteroid encounter was initially awarded much more than expected Short Randezovs has revealed a binary pair With the invention of a small satellite orbit the Dinkinesh closely.

The initial focus of the mission is studying the Trojan asteroids, a group of Rocky’s body that lead Jupiter and it orbit the sun. Lucy will start traveling to Trojan asteroids by visiting Euribets and its binary partner Quetta in 20227, then Polymel and its binary partners, leukes, Oras and binary pairs patroclas and menuetius.

“Every asteroid has a different story to tell the NASA Lucy Mission Program scientist Tom Statler, and these stories come together to draw the history of our solar system.” “Every new asteroid we throw our socks means that we have just begun to understand the depth and ness of that history. Telescopic observations indicate that Donaldzohanson is about to have an interesting story, and I am expecting to be completely surprised – again.”