NASA's Mission Lucy to Unravel Solar System Origin Launches Today on a 12-Year Journey

NASA said that mission Lucy will “revolutionise our knowledge of planetary origins”.

By Edited by Gadgets 360 Newsdesk | Updated: 16 October 2021 11:50 IST

NASA's Mission Lucy to Unravel Solar System Origin Launches Today on a 12-Year Journey

Photo Credit: NASA/ Southwest Research Institute

NASA illustration showing the Lucy spacecraft passing one of Trojan Asteroids near Jupiter

Highlights

NASA's Lucy is a $981-million (roughly Rs. 7,351 crores) mission
The launch takes place today at 3pm IST today
It help astronomers study asteroids orbiting the Sun near Jupiter

Space has always intrigued humans. While many exploration missions have hitherto focussed on our neighbours like the Moon and Mars, US space agency NASA is taking the game a notch higher with its latest launch. NASA is daring to send one of its spacecraft to a place in the dark alleys of the outer solar system that has never been visited before. Called Lucy, the $981-million mission (roughly Rs. 7,351 crores) will help astronomers study a set of asteroids orbiting the Sun near Jupiter.

Jupiter's Trojan asteroids are two clusters of ancient space rocks that are leftovers of planetary formation, NASA said. In an Instagram post, the space agency also shared images of the Atlas V rocket, which will take the spacecraft to its destination, after it was rolled out to the launch pad in Florida. NASA is targeting to launch the mission at 0934 GMT (15:04 IST) and will also broadcast the launch live on the NASA website.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by NASA (@nasa)

The name Lucy has been taken from the 3.2 million years old hominid fossil unearthed in 1974 in Ethiopia that revealed the secrets of human origins. The hope is NASA's Lucy mission will do something of that sort to the mysterious outer solar system.

Lucy will spend 12 years doing gravitational stunts near Jupiter, will swing by at least six of the Trojan asteroids to take photos and determine their compositions. NASA hopes to unravel information about the formation and evolution of the solar system. It said that Lucy will “revolutionise our knowledge of planetary origins”.

[Sponsored] Samsung Galaxy S24: The Ultimate Camera Phone With Smarter On-Device AI

“This team has put in so much work to build a spacecraft that is truly a work of art,” Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, the Lucy project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said during a news conference this week.

According to a report on Space.com, Lucy will conduct two flybys of Earth to adjust its trajectory after the launch. The first flyby of a main-belt asteroid called Donaldjohanson will happen in April 2025. The first Trojan flyby will occur in August 2027, a busy year for the mission. Its final planned flyby will take place in March 2033.

The Galileo spacecraft first flew to Jupiter in 1991 and since then several missions have flown by the main asteroid belt on their way to Jupiter. But none of them ever went to Jupiter's Trojans. NASA's mission Lucy is set to change that.

Realme India CEO Madhav Sheth joins Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast for an exclusive wide-ranging interview, as he talks about the 5G push, Make in India, Realme GT series and Book Slim, and how stores can improve their standing. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.