NASA’s Lucy spacecraft, which launched in 2021, is on its solution to the orbit of Jupiter to check the Trojan asteroids there. It gained’t arrive there till 2027, however the spacecraft can have the chance to do some additional science earlier than then, as it should quickly be making a flyby of one other asteroid referred to as Dinkinesh. At lower than half a mile large, this small asteroid sits in the principle asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and it will likely be Lucy’s first asteroid flyby.
Lucy is scheduled to make the flyby on November 1, in a maneuver that was added to the mission as a bonus purpose earlier this yr. The crew members realized that Lucy could be touring shut sufficient to the asteroid that they might make some additional maneuvers and carry out a flyby, giving them the prospect to take a look at a number of the spacecraft’s asteroid-tracking devices.
It’s additionally the primary time that the asteroid can have been noticed so shut. “That is the primary time Lucy might be getting a detailed have a look at an object that, up so far, has solely been an unresolved smudge in the most effective telescopes,” stated Hal Levison of the Southwest Analysis Institute, Lucy principal investigator, in a press release. “Dinkinesh is about to be revealed to humanity for the primary time.”
The flyby might be used to check out the spacecraft’s system for finding an asteroid and locking its devices onto its location because it flies previous. That is essential as when Lucy finally reaches its targets within the Trojans, it should carry out flybys of 10 asteroids reasonably than going into orbit round any one in all them. With the monitoring system in place, the spacecraft ought to be capable of level its cameras extra exactly and gather extra correct information.
“We’ll know what the spacecraft must be doing always, however Lucy is so distant it takes about 30 minutes for radio indicators to journey between the spacecraft and Earth, so we are able to’t command an asteroid encounter interactively,” stated Mark Effertz, Lucy chief engineer at Lockheed Martin Area. “As an alternative, we pre-program all of the science observations. After the science observations and flyby are full, Lucy will reorient its high-gain antenna towards Earth, after which it should take practically 30 minutes for the primary sign to make it to Earth.”
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