Easter Sunday actually will not be a day of relaxation for the astronomy neighborhood.
All eyes might be on NASA’s asteroid-studying Lucy spacecraft, which is because of have an in depth encounter at 1:51 p.m. EDT (1751 GMT) on April 20, 2025.
Launched in 2021, Lucy is on a 12-year journey to the orbit of Jupiter, throughout which the probe will carry out flybys of eight Trojan asteroids in a quest to study concerning the origins of the photo voltaic system, trying to find parts that would spark the rise of life. However earlier than Lucy will get there, the spacecraft may have time for just a few costume rehearsals.
The primary was a flyby of the asteroid Dinkinesh on Nov. 1, 2023. This coming Sunday, Lucy will zip previous her second goal, the asteroid Donaldjohanson. Lucy will go by the asteroid at a distance of about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers), take a look at its science devices within the course of.
These instruments embrace L’Ralph, a shade digicam and an infrared imaging spectrometer; L’LLORI, the high-resolution Lucy Lengthy Vary Reconnaissance Imager; and L’TES, the far-infrared Lucy Thermal Emission Spectrometer.
“We will observe [Donaldjohanson] as if it was one of many Trojan asteroids, as a result of we needed to have a whole follow run,” Arizona State College professor Phil Christensen, who designed L’TES, stated in a video interview. The objective, he shares, is to determine the asteroid’s composition.
Lucy and Donaldjohanson are linked by excess of their upcoming bodily proximity. The NASA mission was named after the three-million-year-old fossil australopithecine skeleton found in Ethiopia 1974, which contributed to our understanding of human evolution. And who found these bones? Paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, founding father of Arizona State College’s Institute of Human Origins.
Johanson spoke with Christensen through the video interview to debate the Lucy mission, and Christensen had one crucial query to ask. If, as scientists predict, a secondary asteroid is found through the Donaldjohanson flyby — asteroids usually journey in pairs — what would Johanson need to title it?
“Oh, I will have to offer that some actual thought,” stated Johanson.
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