The NASA spacecraft “Lucy” introduced a exceptional shock throughout its preliminary shut encounter with an asteroid. The primary photos despatched again to Earth indicated that “Dinkinesh” is not a single asteroid however fairly an asteroid pair, as revealed by the US area company NASA on Thursday.
Preliminary estimates counsel the bigger asteroid has a diameter of about 790 meters, whereas the smaller one measures round 220 meters. Information from Lucy’s scientific devices in current weeks had hinted that Dinkinesh may probably be an asteroid pair. The pictures captured throughout the flyby on Wednesday confirmed this assumption.
Information transmission continues, as Lucy flew previous Dinkinesh at a distance of roughly 400 kilometers at a velocity of round 16,000 kilometers per hour on Wednesday. This was a take a look at flight to evaluate the performance of the spacecraft’s scientific devices. Preliminary findings point out a promising begin, however the full transmission of all collected information to Earth could take a couple of week.
Lucy launched into its journey from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport in Florida in 2021. The over 14-meter-long spacecraft is fueled by each propellant and rechargeable batteries powered by photo voltaic cells. Its mission is primarily directed towards Jupiter’s asteroids, planning to carefully fly by seven of the so-called Jupiter Trojans: Eurybates, Queta, Polymele, Leucus, Orus, Patroclus, and Menoetius – all named after characters from Homer’s historical epic “Iliad”.
The Jupiter Trojans are asteroids that orbit the Solar alongside the identical path as Jupiter – a gaggle previous it and one other trailing behind. They’re thought to be “fossils of planetary formation,” prompting NASA to anticipate new insights into the formation of planets and our photo voltaic system from this mission. Moreover, Lucy is ready to return 3 times to Earth, leveraging its gravitational pull for flight help, marking a primary within the historical past of area exploration.
The mission focusing on the formation of the planets in our photo voltaic system is designed for twelve years, anticipating Lucy to cowl a complete distance of round 6.5 billion kilometers. The spacecraft’s identify, “Lucy,” was impressed by the Beatles’ tune “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.” It’s stated that this tune performed on a cassette recorder when researchers found elements of the skeleton of a feminine early human within the Ethiopian Afar Triangle in 1974.
This discovery confirmed for the primary time that the ancestors of recent people might stroll upright roughly three million years in the past. The fossil – and now the NASA spacecraft – had been each nicknamed “Lucy.” In accordance with NASA, the identify serves as a novel connection: “Simply because the Lucy fossil supplied distinctive insights into human evolution, the Lucy mission guarantees to revolutionize our understanding of planetary and photo voltaic system formation.”
