NASA is planning to send its first spacecraft to study Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids with the aim to get new insights into the solar system’s formation 4.5 billion years ago.
Context
NASA is planning to send its first spacecraft to study Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids with the aim to get new insights into the solar system’s formation 4.5 billion years ago.
About NASA’s Lucy Mission
- Lucy, the first space mission to study the Trojans, aims to revolutionize human’s knowledge of planetary origins and the formation of the solar system.
- The mission, after receiving boosts from Earth’s gravity, will embark on a Twelve-year journey to 8 different asteroids —
- 1 in the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter
- 7 Trojans
- This is also going to be the first solar-powered spaceship to venture this far from the Sun.
- Lucy will observe more asteroids than any other spacecraft before it.
Jupiter Trojans
- The Jupiter Trojans are commonly called Trojan asteroids or simply Trojans.
- They are a large group of asteroids that share the planet Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun.
- They are thought to be remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets.
- Trojans orbit the Sun in two loose groups.
- One group lead ahead of Jupiter in its path, the other trails behind.
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