NASAs Lucy spacecraft is on track for its first asteroid encounter on November 1. On November 1, 2023, NASAs Lucy spacecraft will fly by the small Main Belt asteroid Dinkinesh (formerly understood as 1999 VD57). About an hour before the spacecrafts closest approach, when its around 10,000 miles (16,000 km) from the asteroid, Lucy will start actively monitoring the position of Dinkinesh with its terminal tracking system, although due to Dinkineshs little size, the system is not expected to “lock-on” to the asteroid up until simply a few minutes before closest method.
On November 1, 2023, NASAs Lucy spacecraft will fly by the little Main Belt asteroid Dinkinesh (formerly called 1999 VD57). This asteroid flyby was contributed to Lucys list of targets in January 2023. Credit: NASAs Goddard Space Flight
Tracking and Monitoring Systems
About an hour before the spacecrafts closest method, when its roughly 10,000 miles (16,000 km) from the asteroid, Lucy will start actively keeping an eye on the position of Dinkinesh with its terminal tracking system, although due to Dinkineshs small size, the system is not anticipated to “lock-on” to the asteroid till simply a few minutes before closest technique. This system will autonomously reorient the spacecraft to keep the small asteroid within the field of vision of the science instruments as the spacecraft zooms by at around 10,000 miles per hour (4.5 m/s). This will be the very first usage of this terminal tracking system, and this flyby was developed to test the system in genuine spaceflight conditions.
Interaction and Data Downlink
As Lucy approaches Dinkinesh on the early morning of November 1, the spacecraft will rotate into a position that allows it to constantly track the asteroid. This will move the high-gain antenna away from Earth, and the spacecraft will not have the ability to interact again up until it has actually completed the encounter series and reoriented itself so that the high-gain antenna is pointing back toward Earth. Imagery and other science and engineering data from the flyby will then be downlinked over the next weeks.
Lucy will check out the Jupiter Trojan asteroids– thought to be “fossils of planet formation.” Credit: NASAs Goddard Space Flight
NASAs Lucy spacecraft is set to zip the asteroid Dinkinesh on November 1, marking its first asteroid encounter. The flyby will check Lucys terminal tracking system and will temporarily interrupt interaction with Earth.
NASAs Lucy spacecraft is on track for its very first asteroid encounter on November 1. Lucys optical navigation group has actually verified that the latest trajectory correction maneuver on September 29 properly set the spacecraft on course for its flyby of the small main belt asteroid Dinkinesh. The spacecraft is expected to pass roughly 265 miles (425 km) from the asteroid at 12:54 p.m. EDT.
On October 28, the team sent out the spacecraft what is called the final knowledge update, a package of information with the most current information about the relative positions of the spacecraft and asteroid. This dataset is precise enough to direct the spacecraft for nearly all the half a million miles (800,000 km) that currently separate Lucy and Dinkinesh.
