The Lucy mission left this Saturday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, towards the asteroids of Troy in the orbit of Jupiter, a 12-year journey to better understand the formation of the Solar System, announced NASA.
The Lucy mission, launched by the Atlas V rocket at 05.34, local time, 09.34 Lisbon, will observe eight asteroids thought to be the “immaculate remnants of planetary formation”, with the aim of studying geology, composition and density, mass and precise volume of those space objects, according to the French agency France-Presse.
That NASA mission, the North American Space Agency, will have a total cost, projected to last 12 years, of 981 million dollars (845.6 million euros).
“Each of the asteroids should deliver a part of our solar system’s history, of our history,” writes AFP, quoting the director of the US space agency’s scientific division, Thomas Zurbuchen.
The approximately seven thousand known Trojan asteroids orbit around the Sun in two groups, one before Jupiter, the other after Jupiter.
Lucy will first study an asteroid in the main asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter, around 2025, then begin the study of the seven asteroids from Troy, until 2033.
The AFP says the largest asteroid to be studied is about 95 kilometers in diameter and that the spacecraft will approach the asteroids at a distance of “only 400 to 950 kilometers, depending on its size, and at a speed of around 24,000 km/hour”.
The mission’s principal investigator, Hal Levison, cites AFP, explained that “one of the surprising things about the Troy asteroids is that they are very different from each other, especially their color: some are grey, some are red, and the color should indicate where they came from”.
The mission’s name, explains the AFP, is an homage to the australopithecine fossil, discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, which “shed light on the evolution of humanity”, with NASA’s Lucy mission hoping to shed light on the evolution of the solar system .
The fossil was named Lucy because investigators were listening to the Beatles song “Lucy in the sky with diamonds” when they found it.
However, the name fits that NASA mission because “there is indeed a diamond on board” in one of the scientific instruments, the L’TES, aboard the spacecraft.
L’TES will take infrared light measurements, making it possible to determine the temperature at the surface of the asteroids.
“Comparing these measurements at night and during the day, we can determine whether the surface consists of blocks of rock or fine dust and sand”, according to the person responsible for L’TES, Phil Christensen, quoted by the French agency.
NASA plans to launch another mission in November to test whether humans will be able to change the orbit of an asteroid if Earth were to be in the path of one of those “killer rocks.”
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