NASA LUCY Spacecraft Group

Mission Lucy is a 12 -year -old trip to explore a strange set of asteroids that lead and follow Jupiter because it revolves around the sun. While traveling to these asteroids Trojan, the probe prepares for its second station in the main belt, and approaches the mysterious space rock to practice the main event.

The NASA spacecraft will implement a fly from the main asteroid belt in Donaldjohanson on April 20 at 1:51 pm Easter, when it comes close to 596 miles (960 km) of the target. This is the second meeting of Lucy with an asteroid, but it is much more complicated than the first flyby, as NASA described it as “a comprehensive rehearsal for dress for Lucy’s main mission”, wrote the space agency in A. press release.

Lucy first Her eyes were placed on Donalddhenson in February The asteroid has been tracked over the past two months to prepare for Flyby. Donaldjohanson, named after the Lucy HomeInid, is a carbon asteroid with a width of about 2.5 miles (4 km). The asteroid is part of a collision that occurred about 150 million years ago, making it one of the smallest main asteroids that a spacecraft visited.

Although it is not a Cuerton Trojan, it is located in a suitable place Lucy to swing on her way to Jovian. The next Flyby will provide the team an opportunity to test LUCY systems and implement notes using all three science tools in the spacecraft.

The spacecraft will direct the same asteroid to track about 30 minutes before its close approach. During that time, high adult LUCY antenna, which it uses to communicate with ground control, will be removed from the ground, suspension of communication. For the rest of Flyby, it will be Lucy alone, spin independently using its peripheral tracking system to keep the Donaldjohanson in the opinion. LUCY will then use science tools to conduct an asteroid monitoring sequence that is very similar to those you will do once they reach Trojan horses.

About 40 seconds from her closest approach to the asteroid, Lucy will stop tracking Donaldjohanson to protect her sensitive tools from condensed sunlight. “If you are sitting on the asteroid, watching the lucus spacecraft that is approaching, you will have to protect your eyes staring at the sun while Lucy is waiting for the glow.” Boye. “These tools are designed to photograph things that illuminate the sun 25 times faded from the Earth, so the aspiration towards the sun may destroy our cameras.”

After its closest approach, it will re -customize its solar compounds to the appearance of the sun. It will re -establish communication with the Earth about an hour after Flyby, and we hope to restore all the precious data you collected. However, the team must be patient, given the extent of Lucy survival, so the process will take several days.

“One of the strange things that wraps your mind around these deep space tasks is the extent of slowing the speed of light,” Vincent said. “Lucy is 12.5 minutes from Earth from Earth, which means that it takes a long time for any signal we send to reach the spacecraft. Then it takes another 12.5 minutes before we get Lucy’s response that he told us that we heard. So, when we ask to run the data after the closest approach, it takes 25 minutes from when we ask for pictures before we get to any of them on the ground.”

Lucy was launched in October 2021, and she pulled a fly from the small main belt in November 2023. The first asteroid meeting was more bonus than he was expected at the beginning. Rendzvous summary revealed a bilateral pair With the discovery of a small satellite that is closely around Denkinch.

The main focus of the mission is on the study of Trojan asteroids, a group of rocky bodies that lead and follow Jupiter because it revolves around the sun. Lucy will start her tour of the asteroid Trojan in 2027 by visiting Eurybates and her QUETA, followed by Polymele and her two -bilateral partner, Leucus, Orus, Patroclus and Menoetius.

“Every asteroid has a different story that tells it, and these stories are copying together to draw the history of our solar system,” Tom Statter, the scientist of the Lucy Mission program in NASA. “The fact that every new asteroid, we visit, knocks our socks, means that we only started to understand the depth and richness of this date. Teaching notes indicate that Donalddhanson will have an interesting story, and I expect completely to be surprised – such.”