NASA's Lucy Spacecraft Preparing For Its First Asteroid Flyby
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
NASA's Lucy spacecraft is preparing for its first close-up look at an asteroid. On Nov. 1, it will fly by asteroid Dinkinesh and test its instruments in preparation for visits in the next decade to multiple Trojan asteroids that circle the sun in the same orbit as Jupiter.
Dinkinesh, less than half a mile, or 1 kilometer, wide, circles the sun in the main belt of asteroids located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Lucy has been visually tracking Dinkinesh since Sept. 3; it will be the first of 10 asteroids Lucy will visit on its 12-year voyage. To observe so many, Lucy will not stop or orbit the asteroids, instead it will collect data as it speeds past them in what is called a "flyby."
"This is the first time Lucy will be getting a close look at an object that, up to this point, has only been an unresolved smudge in the best telescopes," said Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute, which is headquartered in San Antonio. "Dinkinesh is about to be revealed to humanity for the first time."
The primary aim of the Lucy mission, which launched Oct. 16, 2021, is to survey the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, a never-before-explored population of small bodies that orbit the sun in two "swarms" that lead and follow Jupiter in its orbit. However, before Lucy gets to the Trojans, it will fly by another main belt asteroid in 2025 called Donaldjohanson for additional in-flight tests of the spacecraft systems and procedures.
[...] After the Dinkinesh encounter, the Lucy spacecraft will continue in its orbit around the sun, returning to the Earth's vicinity for its second gravity assist in December 2024. This push from Earth will send it back to the main asteriod belt for its 2025 Donaldjohanson flyby, and then on to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids in 2027.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.