WASHINGTON:
A NASA spacecraft named Lucy, the first mission to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, will skim the earth’s atmosphere, passing a mere 350 kms above the surface on October 16, to gain some of the orbital energy it needs to travel to this never-before-visited population of asteroids.
The Trojan asteroids are trapped in orbits around the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter, either far ahead of or behind the giant planet.
Lucy is currently one year into a 12-year voyage and this gravity assist will place it on a new trajectory for a two-year orbit, at which time it will return to Earth for a second gravity assist, NASA said in a statement.
This second assist will give Lucy the energy it needs to cross the main asteroid belt, where it will observe asteroid ‘Donaldjohanson’, and then travel into the leading Trojan asteroid swarm.
There, Lucy will fly past six Trojan asteroids: Eurybates and its satellite Queta, Polymele and its yet unnamed satellite, Leucus, and Orus.
Lucy will then return to Earth for a third gravity assist in 2030 to re-target the spacecraft for a rendezvous with the Patroclus-Menoetius binary asteroid pair in the trailing Trojan asteroid swarm, according to the space agency.
Lucy’s trajectory will bring the spacecraft very close to Earth, lower even than the International Space Station, which means that Lucy will pass through a region full of earth-orbiting satellites and debris.
