NASA recently announced that its very own Lucy spacecraft will be adding yet another asteroid encounter to its course of around 4 billion miles. By November 1, 2023, the craft will reportedly be able to closely view the main belt and a small asteroid in order to perform engineering evaluations on its own navigation system for asteroid tracking.
NASA's Lucy Mission
According to Phys, this Lucy mission has already been on its way to becoming a record-breaking feat, given how it included nine different asteroid visits in the course of 12 years. More specifically, the craft is set to check the asteroids on the Jupiter Trojans. These asteroids have a solar orbit that is equidistant from that of Jupiter.
Initially, the craft was not expected to get close views of asteroids before 2025, when it is set to move through the main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson. Spaceref notes, however, that the team behind Lucy was able to find a small and unnamed asteroid within the internal main belt. They saw this tiny asteroid as a potentially useful target for the craft.
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Asteroid's Convenient and Proximate Distance
Lucy collaborator Raphael Marschall from the Nice Observatory in France noted how the asteroid belt contains millions of asteroids. Marschall was also the one who identified the said asteroid, labeled (152830) 1999 VD57, as a potential subject of interest for the mission. Marschall chose 500,000 asteroids that had clear orbits in order to see if Lucy could be moving close enough to view any of them clearly, even if it were from a long range. He noted how this specific asteroid stood out from the rest. The originally designed trajectory of the craft will take Lucy around 40,000 miles from the asteroid. This is around three times closer than the next nearest asteroid.
The team realized that by making small adjustments, the craft will be able to view this asteroid even more closely. Hence, the said asteroid was officially added to the lineup on January 24.
Approaching the Asteroid Will Enable the Team To Test New Systems
The asteroid is specifically included to help with engineering evaluations of the craft's terminal tracking system.
This novel mechanism is a solution for a long-standing concern faced by various flyby journeys. When a craft goes nearer to the asteroid, it is hard to point out how far the craft actually is from its target. It is also difficult to know where the cameras should be pointed exactly.
Lucy principal investigator Hal Levison of the Southwest Research Institute Boulder noted how Lucy will be the first flyby to use such a complex and innovative system to monitor the asteroid. Such a system will enable the team to capture more photos of the target.
This newly discovered asteroid serves as a great opportunity to test out such a procedure.
The asteroid was not included in the lineup before because of its extremely small size. It is projected to have a size of 700 meters, which is the smallest one that a craft has ever visited.
Starting in May 2023, the team will conduct several maneuvers in order to position the craft at a trajectory that will make the craft pass through the asteroid at a distance of around 450 kilometers.
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