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SpaceNut

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Jupiter's Trojan mission to visit 5 asteriods

The Lucy mission was awarded $3 million by NASA to conduct concept design studies and analyses. The U.S. space agency is scheduled to decide in September 2016 whether to continue with the development of the Lucy spacecraft.

NASA’s proposed Lucy mission to study ‘fossils’ of planets’ formation

A NASA mission to study five primitive asteroids (referred to as Trojans) orbiting near Jupiter has entered its concept design study phase. The spacecraft, named Lucy after the iconic hominin skeleton, will try to answer essential questions about the origin of the Solar System.
“The Trojans are objects that formed throughout the outer Solar System. Thus, they contain important clues about how the giant planets formed. In addition, the Trojans were likely placed on their current orbits by the migration of the planets, and so they will also tell us about that process as well,”

The spacecraft’s payload is expected to include three complementary imaging and mapping instruments, including a color imaging and infrared mapping spectrometer, a high-resolution visible imager, and a thermal infrared spectrometer. Levison hopes that the probe will acquire images with higher resolution than 10 m/px.

Lucy will map albedo, shape, crater spatial and size-frequency distributions, determine the nature of crustal structure and layering, and determine the relative ages of surface units. It will determine the masses and densities, and study subsurface composition via crater windows, fractures, ejecta blankets, and exposed bedding.

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,428

Re: Jupiter's Trojan mission to visit 5 asteriods

http://www.space.com/35220-psyche-and-l … video.html

Lucy to Trojan asteroids of Jupiter.

Phyche to a metal asteroid.

It will be a while before they are launched, and arrive, but really some good missions I think.

SpaceNut

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From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,428

Re: Jupiter's Trojan mission to visit 5 asteriods

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Navig … s_999.html
Navigating NASA's first mission to the Trojan asteroids

In 2021, the feat of navigation that is the Lucy mission will launch. To steer Lucy towards its targets doesn't simply involve programming a map into a spacecraft and giving it gas money - it will fly by six asteroid targets, each in different orbits, over the course of 12 years.

Lucy's destination is among Jupiter's Trojan asteroids, clusters of rocky bodies almost as old as the Sun itself, and visiting these asteroids may help unlock the secrets of the early solar system. Lucy will encounter a Main Belt asteroid in 2025, where it will conduct a practice run of its instruments before encountering the first four Trojan targets from 2027-2028. In 2033, Lucy will end its mission with a study of a binary system of two Trojans orbiting each other.

"There are two ways to navigate a mission like Lucy," he said. "You can either burn an enormous amount of propellant and zig-zag your way around trying to find more targets, or you can look for an opportunity where they just all happen to line up perfectly." To visit these aligned targets, the majority of Lucy's high-speed lane changes will come from gravity assists, with minimal use of fueled tweaks.

What route will Lucy take once its mission is complete, nearly 15 years from now? "We're just going to leave it out there," Englander said. "We did an analysis to see if it passively hits anything, and looking far into the future, it doesn't." The Lucy team has given the spacecraft a clear path for thousands of years, long after Lucy has rewritten the textbooks on our solar system's history.

https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/lu … -s-trojans

SpaceNut

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From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,428

Re: Jupiter's Trojan mission to visit 5 asteriods

History of other sample returns done

https://web.stanford.edu/~pavone/papers … Aero12.pdf
Expected Science Return of Spatially-Extended In-Situ Exploration at Small Solar System Bodies

http://www.euro-cares.eu/files/Submitte … cument.pdf
Mission Overview and Timeline Document proposals for asteroid SR missions have been made to ESA (MarcoPolo, MarcoPolo-R and MarcoPolo-R and MarcoPolo-2D),

Mars_B4_Moon

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Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: Jupiter's Trojan mission to visit 5 asteriods

Exploration of the Jovian Realms

NASA's Lucy blasts off on historic mission to Jupiter's Trojan asteroids
https://www.cnet.com/news/nasas-lucy-pr … asteroids/

Jupiter trojans or Trojan asteroids are a group of asteroids that share the planet Jupiter 's orbit around the Sun. Lucy is set to explore seven. Jupiter trojans. It launched on October 16th, 2021, and will arrive at the L4 Trojan cloud in 2027 after two Earth gravity assists and a fly-by of a main-belt asteroid. It will then return to the vicinity of Earth for another gravity assist to take it to Jupiter's L5 Trojan cloud where it will visit 617 Patroclus. The Japanese space agency has proposed the OKEANOS solar sail to also explore the Jupiter trojan systems.

Mars_B4_Moon

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Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: Jupiter's Trojan mission to visit 5 asteriods

Just 8 days until the first EarthGravityAssist!

'Lucy is now less than 10 times as far away as the moon!'

https://twitter.com/LucyMission/status/ … 9231936513

Void

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Registered: 2011-12-29

Posts: 7,754

Re: Jupiter's Trojan mission to visit 5 asteriods

This is a bit redundant but so what: https://phys.org/news/2022-10-nasa-lucy … earth.html

I hope we all live to see some or even all the results

Done

---

End

Mars_B4_Moon

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Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: Jupiter's Trojan mission to visit 5 asteriods

Lucy Zipped Past Earth to get a Gravitational Assist Towards Jupiter’s Trojans

https://www.universetoday.com/158300/lu … s-trojans/

Mars_B4_Moon

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Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: Jupiter's Trojan mission to visit 5 asteriods

a new Moon

Dinkinesh and its satellite imaged
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa … esh-flyby/

This is why we explore. Turns out that asteroid Dinkinesh is… asteroids Dinkinesh? During the #LucyMission’s first asteroid flyby on Nov. 1, we discovered that the main belt asteroid is a party of two, or binary pair!
https://twitter.com/NASASolarSystem/sta … 6811104371

and also binary companion Menoetius

Patroclus/Menoetius

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-11-02 14:43:53)