Nasa to send first spacecraft to probe Jupiter's asteroids
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
WASHINGTON • The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) is poised to send its first spacecraft to study Jupiter's Trojan asteroids in an effort to glean new insights into the solar system's formation 4.5 billion years ago, the US space agency has said.
The probe, named Lucy after an ancient fossil that provided insights into the evolution of the human species, will launch on Oct 16 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Its mission is to investigate the group of rocky bodies circling the Sun in two swarms, one preceding Jupiter in its orbital path and the other trailing behind it.
After receiving boosts from Earth's gravity, Lucy will embark on a 12-year journey to eight different asteroids - one in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter and then seven Trojans.
"Despite the fact that they really are in a very small region of space, they're very physically different from one another," Dr Hal Levison, the mission's principal scientist, told reporters about the Trojan asteroids, which number more than 7,000 in total.
"For example, they have very different colours - some are grey, some are red," he said, with the differences indicating how far away from the Sun they might have formed before assuming their present trajectory.
"Whatever Lucy finds will give us vital clues about the formation of our solar system," said Dr Lori Glaze, director of Nasa's planetary science division.
Lucy will fly by its target objects within 400km of their surfaces, and use its onboard instruments and large antenna to investigate their geology, including composition, mass, density and volume.
The ship was built by Lockheed Martin and includes over 3km of wire and solar panels that, placed end to end, would be as tall as a five-storey building.
It will be the first solar-powered spacecraft to venture this far from the Sun, and will observe more asteroids than any other spacecraft before it. The total mission cost is US$981 million (S$1.33 billion).
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE