Trojan Exploration of 8 asteroids… The origin and evolution of planets in the solar system
NASA’s asteroid probe ‘Lucy’ went on a 12-year journey to explore all eight asteroids on the 16th (Korean time).
According to NASA, Lucy was launched into space on an Atlas 5 rocket from the 41st Space Launch Station at Cape Canaveral, Florida at 6:34 p.m. on the same day.
After carrying out its first mission by passing close to an asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter in April 2025, the Lucy mission was the first in August 2027 to explore 7 Trojan asteroids orbiting the same orbit as Jupiter for the first time. will do
In the process of flying to an asteroid, it will come to Earth three times and perform a gravity-assisted flight that accelerates using the Earth’s gravity.
If Lucy, which is on a long journey of 6.3 billion km in total, succeeds in this mission, it will be the first spacecraft to return to the vicinity of Earth from outside the solar system.
About 981 million dollars (about 1.161 trillion won) was invested in this expedition.
The name of the probe, Lucy, is taken from the nickname of the fossil Australopithecus afarensis 3.2 million years ago, which provided a turning point in the study of human evolutionary history.
When this fossil was excavated in Ethiopia, Africa in 1974, the Beatles’ song ‘Lucy in the sky with Diamonds’ was popular at the time, so it was given this name. It has the meaning of wishing to make an important contribution to elucidating the evolutionary process.
The Lucy also carried a disc made of diamonds made in a laboratory.
Ringo Starr, who was a member of the Beatles, said in a pre-recorded video that John Lennon, who wrote the song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” would love it, the Associated Press reported.
He said, “John Lennon will be very happy to see Lucy ascend to the sky with diamonds again.”
The Trojan asteroids that Lucy will explore are presumed to be leftovers from the formation of exoplanets such as Jupiter and Saturn, and are estimated to be in a primitive state that has hardly changed over the past 4.5 billion years.
There are about 10,000 Trojan asteroids, the sun and Jupiter form an equilateral triangle, and are caught at the Lagrange points (L4, L5) where gravity becomes zero and orbits the sun in front of and behind Jupiter.
Lucy approaches these asteroids to about 400 km and flies at a speed of 5 to 9 km per second, and uses telemetry equipment to obtain data on the asteroid’s constituent materials, mass, density, and size.
Considering this, Lucy’s mission period is 12 years in total, but it is said that the actual time to explore the asteroid is only 24 hours.
Lucy spreads 7m-diameter disk-shaped solar panels on both sides of the hull to gain power, but this is the first time that solar panels have been applied to a spacecraft entering Jupiter’s orbit, which is about 800 million km away from the sun.
The first asteroid ‘Donaldjohanson’ to be explored by Lucy was selected as the target of exploration because it is close to the flight path to find the Trojan asteroid.
It is estimated that it split from a larger asteroid about 100 to 200 million years ago, making it worth exploring on its own.
Donald Johansson was named after the archaeologist who unearthed the Lucy fossil.
The exploration of the Trojan asteroid begins with the L4 group ‘Eurybates’ orbiting the Sun ahead of Jupiter.
Euribates, together with Orus, forms the core of this asteroid exploration.
The two asteroids are about 64 km wide, have similar dimensions and orbit the same, but have completely different surface colors.
Euribates is gray in color and rich in carbon, but Orus is red in color, so it is presumed that there are many organic substances.
Euribates has a satellite (moon) of about 1 km in size called ‘Queta’, and it is estimated that this satellite with an orbital period of 84 days was also split from the same asteroid as Euribates.
After Euribates and Cueta, the Lucy probed L4 region asteroids such as ‘Polymele’, ‘Leucus’, and Orus, and then again flew with the help of Earth’s gravity, before returning in the early 2030s. Move to L5 group.
From here, around 2033, the expedition will end with the exploration of ‘Patroclus’ and ‘Menoetius’, which are orbiting each other with almost the same size and mass.
NASA expects this will provide new insights into the formation of our solar system, as well as organic matter and life on Earth.
“I think the only thing we can be sure of is that it’s going to be a surprise,” said Phil Christensen, a professor at Arizona State University, who is the lead researcher for the Lucy program.
/yunhap news
