The AFP agency wrote that there are about seven thousand Trojans, as the asteroids orbiting Jupiter are called. They orbit the Sun in two groups, one in front of and the other behind Jupiter.
“What is most surprising about the Trojans is how they differ from each other, especially in color – some are gray, others red. We think that color indicates where they come from, “said Hal Levison, the mission’s chief researcher. His group wants to study the geological composition of asteroids, the exact volume and density of the matter that makes them up.
Lucy in the sky with diamonds
The probe was named after the skeletal finding of a female Australopithecus in Ethiopia in 1974. Those who found it were listening to the Beatles’ song Lucy in the sky with diamonds at the time.
“We’ll put a diamond on Lucy,” Phil Christensen, who controls one of Lucy’s diamond devices, said before the probe was launched. It will measure infrared light, which will allow you to determine the temperature on the surface of asteroids. “We will compare day and night measurements so we can determine if the surface is made of stone or fine dust and sand,” Christensen said. The stone cools more slowly in the dark than the sand.
– .
