NASA's Lucy spacecraft, which commenced its mission on October 16, 2021, with a 12-year objective to explore numerous asteroids, reached a significant milestone on November 1, when it made its initial encounter with the Dinkinesh asteroid as it voyaged through deep space on its way to Jupiter's orbit.
During this encounter, Lucy conducted an engineering test to evaluate its asteroid-tracking navigation system by observing the small main-belt asteroid Dinkinesh (pronounced DIN-ke-nesh), which measures less than half a mile wide and orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.
The spacecraft approached a distance of 265 miles from Dinkinesh, and gathered essential data as it swiftly passed by at a speed of around 10,000 mph, in what's termed a 'flyby'.
The mission team confirmed Lucy's good health and directed the spacecraft to transmit the collected encounter data back to Earth, a process expected to take about a week, according to NASA. Lucy was expected to collect data with its high-resolution camera (L’LORRI) and its thermal-infrared camera (L’TES).
"The team is looking forward to see how the spacecraft performed during this first in-flight test of a high-speed asteroid encounter," NASA wrote in its blog.
Next event - Flyby of Donaldjohanson on April 20, 2025
After the Dinkinesh encounter, the Lucy spacecraft will continue in its orbit around the Sun to reach another asteroid situated between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter in the solar system's main asteroid belt - Donald Johanson in 2025, then to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids in 2027, and then proceed to visit ten Trojan asteroids sharing an orbit with Jupiter around the Sun.
Lucy mission objectives
The Lucy mission uses the Dinkinesh encounter to test systems and prepare the team for the primary mission objective: the exploration of the Trojan asteroids. Scientists on the mission are hopeful that the data gathered can offer them discern connections between the larger main-belt asteroids previously explored by NASA missions and the smaller near-Earth asteroids.
The Trojan asteroids are diverse group of small bodies, that are leftover raw materials from the formation of our solar system’s giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune). They share an orbit with Jupiter as it goes around the Sun.
The Trojan asteroids are time capsules from the earliest days of our solar system more than 4 billion years ago but they have never been explored by a space mission. Whatever Lucy finds at the Trojan asteroids will give us vital clues about the formation of our solar system, shedding light on the conditions during the formation and evolution of all planets, including our own Earth.
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