Lucy Mission to Find Answers to the Origins of the Solar System Through Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroids

Lucy Mission launched by NASA…Get the details…

Wednesday, 4th August 2021

Trojan asteroids that are associated with the planet Jupiter are considered to be remainders of primitive material that formed the outer planets ever since the birth of our Solar System over four billion years ago. In two loose groups, one moving ahead of the largest planet while another tailing it, the Trojans orbit the Sun. These primordial materials in the solar system hold answers to some of the most fundamental questions surrounding the history of the solar system, where did we come from, how did the universe begin, and so on.

Lucy will be the first space mission, already in its final stages before launching by NASA, which will help study these Trojan asteroids that are considered to be rich in dark carbon compounds.

The mission id dubbed Lucy adopts the name from the fossilized human ancestor (called “Lucy” by her discoverers) whose skeleton gave distinctive insight to scientists into humanity's evolution. In a similar fashion, the Lucy mission is expected to revolutionize the knowledge about the origins of planets and the very formation of the solar system.

The mission will be launched on October 16, 2021, and will touch eight different asteroids over a period of 12 years which it will complete with the help of boosts from Earth's gravity. 

Also Read: The sign of the mysterious radar of Mars is not water: the elaboration of something more on red planets.

The launch period of Lucy is of 23 days when it will undergo final testing and fuelling. After the completion of that, it will be finally moved to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, Lucy project manager said, “The coronavirus pandemic required us to re-engineer the way we conducted assembly, integration, and testing. When I think about where the project was a year ago and the challenges we faced, I couldn’t be prouder of the entire team.”

What Lucy is essentially employed to do is explore the Jupiter Trojan asteroids which are a diverse populace of small bodies in space that are believed to be the remains of an earlier solar system and which are now trapped by the gravitational pull of Jupiter and Sun in a deft balancing act.

The US space center said, “The Lucy mission will revolutionize our knowledge of planetary origins and the formation of the solar system.”

NASA also said, “Lucy’s complex path will take it to both clusters of Trojans and give us our first close-up view of all three major types of bodies in the swarms.”

The News Talkie Bureau

Source:

Indiatoday