More than four years ahead of its scheduled asteroid flybys, NASA’s Lucy probe managed to image four targets and capture their motion. The US space agency NASA announced this and published the short video clips. You can see the so-called Jupiter Trojans Eurybates, Polymele, Leucus and Orus. All four were each photographed multiple times over a few hours, making their own motion visible. As those responsible explain, further observation campaigns are to follow, which will be used, among other things, to determine the camera settings for the flybys.
Lucy’s first pictures of Eurybates, Polymele, Leucus and Orus
(Image: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/JHU-APL)
More previews planned
The images were taken with the highest-resolution camera on board the spacecraft, L’LORRI. It is based on the camera of almost the same name in the New Horizons space probe, which was the first to fly past the dwarf planet Pluto in 2015. At the time of the recordings, the four celestial bodies photographed were more than 530 million kilometers away from the probe and no more than individual points of light. Until Lucy arrives at the objects from 2027, Should she take more pictures?to take advantage of the more favorable light conditions compared to Earth. The other target objects should then also be photographed in advance.
Named after an important fossil of the human ancestor Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy has been on her 12-year mission since October 2021. She is supposed to visit and explore several asteroids that are ahead of or behind Jupiter on the same orbit around the sun – the Jupiter Trojans. The primitive celestial bodies are regarded as fossils of planet formation. Before that, it should also fly past the two asteroids Dinkinesh (formerly 1999 VD57) and Donaldjohanson, the detour to the first of the two was only planned a few months ago. Originally, flybys of only seven asteroids were planned, but then satellites were found around two of them, so that a total of at least 10 flybys are now planned.
The probe gets its energy from two large solar collectors, which are supposed to supply enough electricity for the operation of the probe and the scientific instruments even when they are far away from the sun – on the Jupiter orbit. After takeoff, she was supposed to unfold them completely, but that didn’t work, one of them didn’t snap into place. After that, NASA tried for a long time to fully develop it. At the beginning of the year, efforts were suspended for the time being. Sufficient electricity would be supplied and the experiments would have worked best in the vicinity of the sun, the reason given. If she returns there, a decision will be made on possible further attempts.
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