The Lucy objective is already breaking records by planning to visit 9 asteroids during its 12-year trip of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, which orbit the Sun at the exact same range as Jupiter. Initially, Lucy was not arranged to get a close-up view of any asteroids till 2025, when it will fly by the primary belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson.” There are millions of asteroids in the main asteroid belt,” stated Raphael Marschall, Lucy collaborator at the Nice Observatory in France, who identified asteroid 1999 VD57 as a things of special interest for Lucy. Lucys trajectory as originally created will take it within 40,000 miles of the asteroid, at least three times closer than the next closest asteroid.”
As the NASA Lucy spacecraft travels through the inner edge of the primary asteroid belt in the Fall of 2023, the spacecraft will fly by the little, as-of-yet unnamed, asteroid (152830) 1999 VD57.
Artists idea of NASAs Lucy spacecraft at an asteroid. Credit: NASA
NASAs Lucy spacecraft will add another asteroid encounter to its 4-billion-mile journey. On November 1, 2023, Lucy will get a close-up view of a small main-belt asteroid to perform an engineering test of the spacecrafts ingenious asteroid-tracking navigation system.
The Lucy mission is already breaking records by preparing to go to 9 asteroids during its 12-year tour of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, which orbit the Sun at the same range as Jupiter. Initially, Lucy was not scheduled to get a close-up view of any asteroids till 2025, when it will fly by the main belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson. The Lucy group identified a little, as-yet unnamed asteroid in the inner main belt, designated (152830) 1999 VD57, as a potential brand-new and useful target for the Lucy spacecraft.
” There are millions of asteroids in the primary asteroid belt,” stated Raphael Marschall, Lucy collaborator at the Nice Observatory in France, who recognized asteroid 1999 VD57 as an object of special interest for Lucy. Lucys trajectory as initially designed will take it within 40,000 miles of the asteroid, at least three times closer than the next closest asteroid.”
As the NASA Lucy spacecraft travels through the inner edge of the primary asteroid belt in the Fall of 2023, the spacecraft will zip the little, as-of-yet unnamed, asteroid (152830) 1999 VD57. This graphic programs a top-down view of the Solar System indicating the spacecrafts trajectory soon prior to the November 1 encounter. Credit: NASAs Goddard Space Flight
The Lucy team realized that, by including a little maneuver, the spacecraft would have the ability to get an even more detailed take a look at this asteroid. On January 24, the team formally added it to Lucys tour as an engineering test of the spacecrafts pioneering terminal tracking system. This new system resolves an enduring issue for flyby objectives: throughout a spacecrafts technique to an asteroid, it is quite challenging to determine precisely how far the spacecraft is from the asteroid, and precisely which method to point the video cameras.
” In the past, a lot of flyby missions have actually represented this uncertainty by taking a lot of images of the area where the asteroid may be, suggesting low effectiveness and lots of images of blank space,” said Hal Levison, Lucy principal private investigator from the Southwest Research Institute Boulder, Colorado office. “Lucy will be the first flyby objective to utilize this innovative and complex system to instantly track the asteroid throughout the encounter. This unique system will allow the group to take a lot more images of the target.”
It ends up that 1999 VD57 provides an exceptional chance to confirm this never-before-flown treatment. The geometry of this encounter– especially the angle that the spacecraft approaches the asteroid relative to the Sun– is very similar to the missions prepared Trojan asteroid encounters. This enables the team to perform a dress rehearsal under similar conditions well in advance of the spacecrafts main clinical targets.
Since it is exceptionally small, this asteroid was not recognized as a target previously. 1999 VD57, estimated to be a simple 0.4 miles (700 m) in size, will be the smallest primary belt asteroid ever checked out by a spacecraft. It is a lot more comparable in size to the near-Earth asteroids gone to by current NASA objectives OSIRIS-REx and DART than to formerly gone to primary belt asteroids.
The Lucy group will perform a series of maneuvers beginning in early May 2023 to position the spacecraft on a trajectory that will pass roughly 280 miles (450 km) from this little asteroid.
Lucys primary detective is based out of the Boulder, Colorado branch of Southwest Research Institute, headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, supplies total mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, constructed the spacecraft. Lucy is the 13th mission in NASAs Discovery Program. NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.