NASA’s Lucy probe took pictures of some of the asteroids it will visit throughout its mission. She is still more than 540 million kilometers from them (three times the distance between Earth and the Sun), but even so, she managed to get images of space rocks moving through space.
Between March 25 and 27, the spacecraft used the L’LORRI camera to capture the first images of four Trojan asteroids from Jupiter. Trojans are gravitationally bound to planets and, therefore, orbit the Sun accompanying them – in the case of Jupiter, there are Trojans in front of and behind the planet.
All photos were taken at the same scale but have different orientation as a result of camera placement variations. In the sequence below, are the images of the asteroids Eurybates, Polymele, Leucus and Orus:
Asteroids were observed for periods determined by the time it takes to complete one rotation. Therefore, Polymele was observed for approximately one and a half hours, and Orus, for 10 hours. These photos are just the first in a series of observations designed to measure how these asteroids reflect sunlight at angles different from those seen from Earth.
They may just look like bright dots in images, barely noticeable among the stars. Even so, know that the data offered by these dots will be of great help to mission scientists, who will use them to determine the exposure time of Lucy’s observations, when she is close to her targets.
NASA launched the Lucy mission in 2021, which will be the first to study Trojan asteroids. It is following a 12-year journey towards two rocks in the Asteroid Belt between Jupiter and Mars, as well as seven Trojans from the gas giant. By studying them, she could provide a true revolution in the knowledge of the formation of planets and the origins of the Solar System.
Source: NASA
