Lucy spacecraft set to encounter new asteroid target

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will add one other asteroid encounter to its 4-billion-mile journey. On Nov. 1, 2023, the Southwest Analysis Institute-led Lucy mission will get a close-up view of a small principal belt asteroid to conduct an engineering take a look at of the spacecraft’s modern asteroid-tracking navigation system.

The Lucy mission was already on the right track to interrupt data by its deliberate go to of 9 asteroids throughout its 12-year mission to tour the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, which orbit the sun on the identical distance as Jupiter. Initially, Lucy was not anticipated to get a close-up view of any asteroids till 2025, when it should fly by the primary belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson. Nonetheless, the SwRI-led Lucy staff has recognized a small, as-yet unnamed asteroid within the inside principal belt as a possible new and helpful goal for the Lucy spacecraft.

“There are tens of millions of asteroids within the main asteroid belt,” mentioned Dr. Raphael Marschall, Lucy collaborator of the Good Observatory in France, who recognized asteroid (152830) 1999 VD57 as an object of particular curiosity for Lucy. “I chosen 500,000 asteroids with well-defined orbits to see if Lucy is perhaps touring shut sufficient to get take a look at any of them, even from a distance. This asteroid actually stood out. With none modifications, Lucy’s trajectory would take it inside 40,000 miles of the asteroid, no less than 3 times nearer than the next-closest asteroid.”

The Lucy staff realized that with a small maneuver, the spacecraft might get a detailed take a look at this asteroid. On January 24, 2023, the staff formally added the asteroid flyby to Lucy’s tour as an engineering take a look at of the spacecraft’s pioneering terminal monitoring system. The brand new system solves a long-standing downside for flyby missions: Throughout a spacecraft’s method to a goal, it’s fairly tough to find out precisely how far the spacecraft is from the asteroid and precisely which approach to level the cameras.

“Up to now, most flyby missions have accounted for this uncertainty by taking lots of pictures of the area the place the asteroid is perhaps, which is inefficient and produces plenty of pictures of clean space,” says Lucy Principal Investigator Dr. Hal Levison, of SwRI’s Photo voltaic System Science and Exploration Division in Boulder, Colorado. The SwRI headquarters is in San Antonio. “Lucy would be the first flyby mission to make use of an modern and complicated system to mechanically monitor the asteroid throughout the encounter. The novel terminal monitoring system will permit the spacecraft to take many extra pictures of the goal.”

Asteroid 1999 VD57 offers a superb alternative to validate this never-before-flown process. The geometry of this encounter—significantly the angle that the spacecraft approaches the asteroid relative to Earth and the sun—is similar to the deliberate Trojan asteroid encounters. This flyby permits the staff to hold out a gown rehearsal underneath comparable circumstances nicely prematurely of the spacecraft’s principal scientific targets, the flybys of the never-before-explored Trojan asteroids.

This asteroid was not recognized as a goal earlier as a result of this can be very small. The truth is, 1999 VD57 would be the smallest principal belt asteroid ever visited by a spacecraft, estimated to be a mere 0.4 miles (700 m) in measurement. It’s extra comparable in measurement to the near-Earth asteroids visited by current space missions, together with OSIRIS-REx and DART, than to beforehand visited principal belt asteroids.

The Lucy staff will perform a sequence of maneuvers beginning in early Could 2023 to position the spacecraft on a trajectory that can move roughly 280 miles (450 km) from this small asteroid.