13/10/2021
NASA's 12-year long asteroid mission
NASA will launch an asteroid mission to investigate the earliest days of our solar system.
The spacecraft lucy will spend 12-year in the outer solar system, where it will visit ancient "Trojan" asteroids that orbit in the same path as the planet Jupiter.
The spacecraft Lucy will be the first one to visit asteroids in this region. It will also make the first one to flyby Earth from the outer solar system.
first space mission in history which will visit to as many different destinations in independent orbits around our sun,
Spacecraft Lucy will explore more than 7 trojan asteroids.
NASA has taken inspiration from the Lucy skeleton, which represents the beginning of humans to explore the beginning of the solar system.
"These asteroids are very important for understanding how the giant planets formed and the solar system evolved.
One small world will be located in the "main belt" of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, while the other seven are Trojans.
The mission will target a range of different kinds of asteroid bodies : C-type (chondrite, common ancient asteroids made of clay and silicate), D-type (asteroids with low albedos or reflectivity, which may be rich in organic molecules) and P-type (more asteroids with low albedos that may also be rich in organics, although we have no samples yet on Earth to confirm this).
"The dark-red P- and D-type Trojans resemble those found in the Kuiper Belt of icy bodies that extends beyond the orbit of Neptune.
"The C-types are found mostly in the outer parts of the main belt of asteroids, between Mars and Jupiter.
Both of those objects are near-Earth asteroids, and comparing this category of space rock with Lucy's observations of the Trojans may give scientists a new path to understanding the solar system.
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