Cape Capeeral, Florida (AP) – NASA Lucy Spacecraft It will exceed a small asteroid this week because it makes its way to a larger prize: the explorer Asteroid swarms near Jupiter.
Be The second asteroid meeting For Lucy, which was launched in 2021 in one of the pursuits that you will transfer to 11 Space rocks. Documentary methods should help scientists better understand our early solar system when planets were formed; The asteroids are Old food residue.
The next Flyby is a 2027 dress rehearsal when Lucy reaches the so -called asterfall -of -Jupiter.
On Sunday, the spacecraft will move the three science tools, you will notice the non -harmful asteroid known as Donaldjohanson. The meeting will take place 139 million miles (223 million km) of the ground in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and it will take 12 minutes for each part of the data to reach flying units in Colorado.
The world of excavation that the asteroid has been called to be in the creator of the spacecraft and the Lockheed Martin operator to control all events. Lucy Al -Ahfuri has discovered in Ethiopia 50 years ago; The spacecraft is named after the famous human grandfather.
LUCY will venture from NASA approximately 596 miles (960 km) for this asteroid, which is estimated at 2 miles (4 km) in length but shorter in the width. Scientists must have a better idea of its size and shape after the short visit. The spacecraft will be enlarged by more than 30,000 miles per hour (48,000 km per hour).
The asteroid is among the endless shrapnel to result from a large collision 150 million years ago.
“It will not be an essential potato,” said scientist Hull Levison of the Southwest Research Institute.
Instead, Levison said that the asteroid may look like a bowling pin or even a snowman like Arrokoth, the Kuper belt object visited by the new spacecraft in NASA in 2019. The other possibility is that there are two lengthy buttocks but separate from each other.
He said, “We don’t know what to expect. This is what makes this great.”
There will be no connections with Lucy during the Flyby Fly because the spacecraft turns its antenna away from Earth to track the asteroid. Levison expects to have most of the science data within one day.
The next station Lucy – the “main event”, as Levison calls it – will be the Troy asteroids that share the orbit of Jupiter around the sun. Sands of Trojan horses precede and follow the largest planet in the solar system where the sun lasts. Lucy will visit eight of them from 2027 to 2033, some in pairs of two.
Lloyd was the first asteroid fly in 2023 when it swept the small Denkinch, and also in the main asteroid belt. The spacecraft discovered a small moon around it.
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