NASA prepares to explore Trojan asteroids 0:57
(CNN) -
NASA's first mission to reconnoiter eight ancient asteroids was launched on its ambitious journey.
Weather conditions were more than 90% favorable Saturday morning when the Lucy mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 5:34 am (Miami time).
The launch team confirmed that they received a signal from the spacecraft confirming that it was safe and fine just after 7 a.m. and that Lucy successfully deployed her impressive solar panels.
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Lucy will embark on a 12-year mission to explore Jupiter's swarms of Trojan asteroids, which have never been observed.
Trojan asteroids, which take their name from Greek mythology, orbit the Sun in two swarms: one that goes ahead of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, and a second that goes behind.
So far, the only glimpses we've had of the Trojans have been artistic renderings or animations.
Lucy will provide the first high-resolution images of what these asteroids look like.
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This illustration shows the Lucy spacecraft passing one of the Trojan asteroids near Jupiter.
Lucy is the first spacecraft designed to visit and observe these asteroids, which are remnants from the early days of our solar system.
The mission will help researchers go back in time to find out how the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.
Lucy's 12-year mission could also help scientists learn how our planets ended up occupying their current places.
"The crucial thing about Lucy is science and how she is going to tell us about the Trojans," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
"It is very important to observe them because these asteroids tell us about a chapter in our own history, in this case, the history of the formation of the outer planets in the solar system," said Zurbuchen.
"It still amazes me that if you take a rock or look at one of those planetary bodies and add science to it, it becomes a history book."
This mission will observe the 'fossils' of Jupiter 0:51
Visiting mysterious asteroids
There are about 7,000 Trojan asteroids, the largest of which is 250 kilometers in diameter.
Asteroids represent the leftover material left over from the formation of the giant planets in our solar system, including Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
Although they share an orbit with Jupiter, asteroids are very far from the planet, almost as far as Jupiter from the Sun, according to NASA.
The spacecraft plans to pass an asteroid in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and will then explore seven of the Trojans.
During the course of her mission, Lucy will return to Earth's orbit on three separate occasions to receive gravity aids that can launch her on the right path.
This will make Lucy the first spaceship to travel to Jupiter and return to Earth.
This graph shows Lucy's impressive trajectory to reach the asteroids in 12 years.
The mission takes its name from the Lucy fossil, the remains of an ancient human ancestor discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. The skeleton has helped researchers reconstruct aspects of human evolution, and members of NASA's Lucy team hope that their mission will accomplish a similar feat in relation to the history of our solar system.
NASA prepares first mission to Trojan asteroids
The Trojans "are kept there by the gravitational effect of Jupiter and the Sun, so if you put an object there early in the history of the solar system, it has been stable forever," said Hal Levison, the principal investigator of the Mission Lucy, based at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
"These things are really the fossils from which the planets formed."
Both the fossil and the mission are a nod to the Beatles tune "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," which is why the Lucy mission logo includes a diamond.
Over 12 years, Lucy will travel about 6.4 billion kilometers moving at about 17,881.6 meters per second).
Lucy will specifically visit these asteroids, all of them named after heroes you may recognize from Homer's "The Iliad": Eurybates, Queta, Polymele, Leucus, Orus, Patroclus, and Menoetius.
NASA's Lucy mission will explore seven Trojan asteroids.
This illustration shows the binary asteroid Patroclus / Menoetius, Eurybates, Orus, Leucus, Polymele, and the main belt asteroid DonaldJohanson.
Eurybates is not one of the Trojans, but it was chosen because it is the largest remnant of an ancient massive collision, meaning it could reveal what is inside an asteroid.
Observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope found that the small asteroid called Queta is a satellite of Eurybates.
Each of the asteroids Lucy will pass through differs in size and color.
"One of the really surprising things we found about Trojans when we started studying them from the ground is how different they are from each other," Levison said.
"So if you want to understand what this population tells us about how planets formed, you need to understand that diversity, and that's what Lucy intends to do."
A feat of engineering
The Lucy spacecraft measures more than 14 meters from end to end, in large part due to its gigantic solar panels, each the width of a school bus, designed to maintain the power supply of the spacecraft's instruments.
But Lucy also has fuel to help execute some complex maneuvers on her way to the asteroids.
According to Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, director of the Lucy project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, it took a team of more than 500 engineers and scientists to conceptualize and build the spacecraft.
"Lucy will be the first NASA mission to travel this far from the sun without nuclear power," said Joan Salute, associate director of flight programs for NASA's Division of Planetary Sciences, adding: "To generate enough power, Lucy It has two large systems of circular solar panels that open like Chinese fans. They open autonomously and simultaneously, and they open about an hour after launch. "
Lucy will use three science instruments to study asteroids, including color and black-and-white cameras, a thermometer, and an infrared imaging spectrometer to determine the composition of asteroid surface materials.
The spacecraft will communicate with Earth through its antenna, which can also be used to help determine the masses of asteroids.
The nearly assembled Lucy spacecraft is shown in late 2020.
The instruments will allow the science team to search for moons around these asteroids and craters on their surfaces, which can help determine their age, as well as the origin and evolution of the asteroids.
Lucy will fly alongside asteroids at about 6,705 meters per second, about four times slower than when NASA's New Horizons spacecraft passed Pluto and the distant object Arrokoth, said Hal Weaver, principal investigator for Lucy's L'LORRI instrument at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
NASA confirms that the New Horizons spacecraft flew over Ultima Thule, on the edge of the solar system
Lucy will also be within 965 kilometers of each asteroid during her flyby, as opposed to 3,218 kilometers for the Arrokoth flyby, which means the images of Troy will have four times better resolution.
This long exposure image, taken over 2 minutes and 30 seconds, captures the beauty of the morning launch.
After Lucy's mission is complete, the team plans to propose an expanded mission to explore more Trojans.
The spacecraft will remain in a stable orbit that travels the path of its exploration between Earth and Jupiter, and will have no chance of colliding with either of them for more than 100,000 years.
If the orbit becomes unstable, it is likely heading towards the sun or being ejected from our solar system.
AsteroidsNASA