NASA’s Lucy Mission to study Jupiter’s Trojan asteroid – Burning Issues – Free PDF Download

NASA’s Lucy mission

• The Jupiter trojans, commonly called Trojan asteroids or simply Trojans, are a large group of asteroids that share the planet Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun.

• More than 9,800 Jupiter trojans have been found as of May 2021. By convention, they are each named from Greek mythology after a figure of the Trojan War, hence the name “Trojan”.
• The total number of Jupiter trojans larger than 1 km in diameter is believed to be about 1 million

• The term “Trojan Asteroid” specifically refers to the asteroids co-orbital with Jupiter, but the general term “trojan” is sometimes more generally applied to other small Solar System bodies with similar relationships to larger bodies: for example, there are both Mars trojans and Neptune trojans.
• The term “Trojan asteroid” is normally understood to specifically mean the Jupiter trojans because the first Trojans were discovered near Jupiter’s orbit and Jupiter currently has by far the most known Trojans
• NASA is poised to send its first spacecraft to study Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids to glean new insights into the solar system’s formation 4.5 billion years ago, the space agency

• The probe, called Lucy after an ancient fossil that provided insights into the evolution of human species, will launch on October 16 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

• Its mission is to investigate the group of rocky bodies circling the Sun in two swarms, one preceding Jupiter in its orbital path and the other trailing behind it.
• After receiving boosts from Earth’s gravity, Lucy will embark on a 12-year journey to eight different asteroids — one in the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter and then seven Trojans.

• Lucy will fly by its target objects within 250 miles (400 kilometers) of their surfaces, and use its onboard instruments and large antenna to investigate their geology, including composition, mass, density and volume.
• The ship was built by Lockheed Martin and includes over two miles of wire and solar panels that, placed end-to-end, would be as tall as a five-story building.
• It will be the first solar-powered to venture this far from the Sun, and will observe more asteroids than any other spacecraft before it. The total mission cost is $981 million.

• The researchers  discovered Lucy the fossil in Ethiopia in 1974
• Lucy is the common name of , several hundred pieces of fossilized bone representing 40 percent of the skeleton of a female of the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis.

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