Lucy (space probe)

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Lucy

Artist's impression of the Lucy spacecraft flying past a Jupiter Trojan
Mission goal Research into several Jupiter Trojans
Client National Aeronautics and Space AdministrationNASA NASA
Launcher Atlas V (401)
Course of the mission
Start date October 16 to
November 5, 2021
launch pad Cape Canaveral LC-41
 
 October 2021 begin
 
 April 2025 Flyby (52246) Donaldjohanson
 
 August 2027 Flyby (3548) Eurybates
 
 September 2027 Flyby (15094) Polymele
 
 April 2028 Flyby (11351) Leucus
 
 October 2028 Flyby (21900) Orus
 
 March 2033 Flyby (617) Patroclus - Menoetius
 
Mission logo
Lucy insignia.svg

Lucy is an American space probe that is supposed to explore six asteroids from the Jupiter Trojan group . Jupiter Trojans are asteroids that precede or follow Jupiter in orbit around the Sun.

On January 4, 2017, Lucy was selected along with the Psyche mission as NASA's next mission in the Discovery program .

The planned mission is named after the iconic Lucy , the partial skeleton of a female individual of the hominid Australopithecus afarensis , because the Jupiter Trojans are fossils of planet formation : bodies that came together in the early history of the solar system to form planets and other celestial bodies. The Australopithecus fossil itself was named after the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds .

Overview

Lucy is scheduled to take off in October 2021 and fly past Template: future / in 4 yearsthe main belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson , named after the discoverer of the Lucy hominid fossil, in April 2025 . The probe will then reach Template: future / in 5 yearsthe L 4 Trojans (which are about 60 ° ahead of Jupiter, also known as the Greek camp) in 2027 , and will pass four Trojans, namely (3548) Eurybates , (15094) Polymele , (11351) Leucus and (21900) Orus . Then Lucy is supposed to fly back close to the earth, where the probe does a swing-by on the earth to the L 5 trojan collection (which hangs back about 60 ° from Jupiter, also called the Trojan camp), where it passes the double asteroids and Jupiter trojan (617) Patroclus - Menoetius becomes.

Harold F. Levison of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado is the Principal Investigator with Catherine Olkin of the Southwest Research Institute as the Deputy Principal Investigator . NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center will lead the project.

Exploring the Jupiter Trojans was a high priority target in the Planetary Science Decadal Survey .

Instruments

Selection:

  • L'Ralph - Panchromatic and color visible imager and infrared spectroscopic mapper. L'Ralph is based on the Ralph instrument at New Horizons and is being built at the Goddard Space Flight Center .
  • L'LORRI - high-resolution visible imager. L'LORRI is a derivative of the LORRI instrument at New Horizons and is being built at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
  • L'TES - thermal infrared spectrometer. L'TES is similar to OTES at OSIRIS-REx and is being built at Arizona State University .
  • The radio gravity experiment will determine the mass of the Trojans by measuring Doppler shifts in the probe's radio telecommunications hardware.

course

Train from Lucy
The asteroids of the inner solar system and Jupiter .

Objectives with their flyby data:

  • April 20, 2025: (52246) Donaldjohanson , 4 km in diameter, C-type asteroid in the inner main belt , member of ~ 130Myr old Erigone family; Approach to 922 km
  • August 12, 2027: (3548) Eurybates , 64 km in diameter, C-type Jupiter Trojans in the Greek camp at the L 4 Lagrangian point, largest member of the first known collision family of Jupiter Trojans; Approach up to approx. 1000 km
  • September 15, 2027: (15094) Polymele , 21 km diameter, P-type Jupiter Trojans on L 4 , probably a collision fragment; closest approximation up to approx. 415 km
  • April 18, 2028: (11351) Leucus , 34 km in diameter, D-type Jupiter Trojan, slowly rotating, on L 4 ; Approach up to approx. 1000 km
  • November 11, 2028: (21900) Orus , 51 km in diameter, C-type Jupiter Trojan on L 4 ; Approach up to approx. 1000 km
  • March 2, 2033: (617) Patroclus , P-type double asteroid. The larger, Patroclus, has a diameter of 113 km, the smaller Menoetius has a diameter of 104 km. They are about 680 km away and are located in the Trojan camp on L 5 . Approach up to approx. 1000 km.

After these fly-bys, the probe would be expected to shuttle between the two camps about six years apart.

Controversy over the starting order

The contract for the start of Lucy was awarded to the United Launch Alliance (ULA) in January 2019 following a tender . The launch will take place with an Atlas V at a price of 148 million US dollars . SpaceX, as the unsuccessful bidder, filed a formal appeal against this decision. A much cheaper offer than ULA was made “with an extremely high probability of a mission success”. On April 4, 2019, SpaceX withdrew the complaint.

Web links

Commons : Lucy (space probe)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ NASA Selects United Launch Alliance's Reliable Atlas V Rocket to Launch Lucy Mission to Jupiter's Trojan Asteroids. ULA, January 31, 2019, accessed February 1, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Fiscal Year 2021 Congressional Justification 2020. (PDF, 12 MB) NASA, February 10, 2020, p. PS-37, PDF page 428 , accessed on February 16, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Kenneth Chang: A Metal Ball the Size of Massachusetts That NASA Wants to Explore . In: The New York Times , January 6, 2017. Retrieved January 7, 2017. 
  4. ↑ Karen Northon: NASA Selects Two Missions to Explore the Early Solar System . 4th January 2017.
  5. ↑ Alexandra Witze: Five Solar System sights NASA should visit . In: Nature News , March 16, 2015. Retrieved October 2, 2015. 
  6. ^ Donald C. Johanson, Kate Wong: Lucy's legacy. The quest for human origins . 1st edition. Three Rivers Press, Crown Publishing Group, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-307-39640-2 , pp. 8-9 .
  7. ↑ Casey Dreier: NASA announces five Discovery proposals selected for further study . In: The Planetary Society , September 30, 2015. Retrieved October 1, 2015. 
  8. ↑ Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) 2015 News Release - SwRI awarded $ 3 million NASA contract to develop mission to Jupiter's Trojan asteroids . October 2nd, 2015.
  9. ↑ Lucy flyer (PDF).
  10. ^ HF Levison, C. Olkin, KS Noll, S. Marchi: Lucy: Surveying the Diversity of the Trojan Asteroids, the Fossils of Planet Formation . In: 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. March 20-24, 2017. The Woodlands, Texas ... bibcode : 2017LPI .... 48.2025L
  11. ^ Jeff Foust: SpaceX protests NASA launch contract award. In: Spacenews. February 13, 2019, accessed February 13, 2019 .
  12. ↑ SpaceX drops protest of NASA launch contract. In: SpaceNews.com. April 5, 2019, accessed May 5, 2019 .