The NASA probe must leave Saturday to these celestial bodies located in the orbit of Jupiter, residues of the materials that have formed the planets 4.5 billion years ago.
by
She’s called Lucy. With reference to the famous Australopitheque of more than 3 million years, whose skeleton was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 and which delivered a lot of information on homo-specific births. By taking this name Lucy for its new mission, NASA hopes that the probe that needs to take off Saturday, October 16 of the Kennedy Space Center (Florida) will also bring new knowledge about other origins, more distant, those of the solar system. .
They are called Hector, Achilles, Priam, Patrocle … Named after the characters of the Iliad, these are the so-called “Troyens” asteroids. Costing in thousands, they are divided into two groups located in two very particular places of the orbit of Jupiter, the points of Lagrange L4 and L5. The laws of gravitation mean that in these areas, which represent the peaks of the two equilateral triangles whose base would be the Sun-Jupiter segment, the respective attractions of our star and the giant planet are balanced. It is therefore helms of stability – or traps if we see things more severely. L4 precedes Jupiter by 60 ° in its revolution around the sun while the followed by 60 °.
Genuine odyssey
Several spatial missions have already taken target asteroids but none has ever visited the Trojans and Lucy will therefore be a great first. After taking off, this 1.5 tonne gear (including 771 kg of fuel) will begin a true odyssey in the solar system. It will first have, and twice – in 2022 and 2024 -, go with the Earth to enjoy a gravitational boost of our planet, which will send it to L4. During this trip, on April 20, 2025, she will cross a representative of the main asteroid belt between March and Jupiter, a big pebble named Donaldjohanson … In tribute to the American paleoanthropologist who coordinated the mission that discovered the australopitheque Lucy. The meeting with this asteroid will be an opportunity to perform a general repetition for the probe, which carries three instruments: a very high resolution camera and two spectrometers to determine the chemical composition of the cross stars.
Lucy will arrive at L4 in 2027 and, on 12 August that year, will fly over his first Trojan, Eurybate, an asteroid of about sixty kilometers of diameter that has two peculiarities: the first is to belong to a Trojan family from a cataclysmic collision, the second of having a small satellite named Queta. From September 2027 to November 2028, Lucy will visit three other asteroids, polymels, leucos and oros. Then, the probe, with its two huge solar panels over 7 meters in diameter, will leave to L5.
You have 56.93% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.